We the people have always been more loyal to our states than our nation, let’s be real. I think that’s pretty normal. Who can identify on a personal level with a 3000-mile wide mass of land? Hamilton thought states should be devalued because it would bring greater unity to the country, and that was easy for him because he wasn’t from any of the states. But he lost that fight, and we remain a land divided by many borders, each containing unique cultures with unique “rights.” There is no uniting us. We don’t have any thing left to bind us together, except an idea of liberty and freedom, which I suppose people interpret how they wish.
I read an essay by Sarah Vowell this morning about maps, especially antique maps. She worked in a gallery in SF that dealt in such artifacts. I love old maps from before humans achieved flight. They are so wildly inaccurate and disproportionate. In this map from 1715, California is shown as a huge island, and the place where I’m from was “Parts Unknown.” Cuba and the rest of the West Indies are huge, because if they showed them to scale they would mostly be tiny dots.
I found a 1767 map of St. Croix, beautifully drawn and colored, with little pictures of ships and anchors and lovely handwriting. The entire island is covered with sugar plantations, then there is a tiny harbor on the north side, with a small grid of streets and lots of docks where ships would arrive and depart constantly. When this map was published, little Alex Hamilton was living there with his mom and brother, helping her out in the small shop she managed. Today, the slave auction blocks and fields of sugar cane have been replaced with golf courses and resort hotels.
