In the decade before 1789 most men, it seems, felt that their state
and their community were real, but that the confederation of states
was unreal. The idea of their state, its flag, its most conspicuous
leaders, or whatever it was that represented Massachusetts, or
Virginia, were genuine symbols. That is to say, they were fed by
actual experiences from childhood, occupation, residence, and the
like. The span of men's experience had rarely traversed the imaginary
boundaries of their states. The word Virginian was related to pretty
nearly everything that most Virginians had ever known or felt. It was
the most extensive political idea which had genuine contact with their
experience.
Their experience, not their needs. For their needs arose out of their
real environment, which in those days was at least as large as the
thirteen colonies. They needed a common defense. They needed a
financial and economic regime as extensive as the Confederation. But
as long as the pseudo-environment of the state encompassed them, the
state symbols exhausted their political interest. An interstate idea,
like the Confederation, represented a powerless abstraction. It was an
omnibus, rather than a symbol, and the harmony among divergent groups,
which the omnibus creates, is transient.
I have said that the idea of confederation was a powerless
abstraction. Yet the need of unity existed in the decade before the
Constitution was adopted.
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