"Warring for America: Cultural Contests in the Era of 1812" Topic

"The War of 1812 was one of a cluster of events that left unsettled what is often referred to as the Revolutionary settlement. At once postcolonial and neoimperial, the America of 1812 was still in need of definition. As the imminence of war intensified the political, economic, and social tensions endemic to the new nation, Americans of all kinds fought for country on the battleground of culture. The War of 1812 increased interest in the American democratic project and elicited calls for national unity, yet the essays collected in this volume suggest that the United States did not emerge from war in 1815 having resolved the Revolution's fundamental challenges or achieved a stable national identity. The cultural rifts of the early republican period remained vast and unbridged."
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Amicalement
Armand

I've read that a single identity for the USA did not begin to emerge until after the Civil War, when people started to say "the United States is" rather than "the United States are". I always find it easier to liken the USA to Europe when explaining the differences I've found in my visits around the USA. It is a collection of self regulating states with a central overriding government. It helps explain why so many Americans don't have a passport or leave the country. It also helps explain the civil war when people considered that their loyalty was to their State, not to the Federal government.