"Life in Colonial America Prior to the Revolutionary War" Topic

"When we peel back the layers of American history, we are often tasked with trying to identify what people of the time were thinking and doing to survive. They were people, just like us, but who lived in a time that would be perceived as backward in many ways to the modern American. But that doesn't mean we cannot understand their world and how it set up what would eventually give way to the American culture we've come to know.

For one thing, colonists did not identify themselves as Americans. At least, they did not view themselves as a continental people. Most colonists viewed themselves as members of whichever town or colony they resided in. This tribal-way-of-thinking is reminiscent of rooting for your favorite sports team or showing pride for your hometown. You place far more value in your own club or community than you do in a rival's or strangers. Regional identities were about as far as it went for much of the early to mid-eighteenth century. It wasn't that people despised other colonists from different regions. It was that, in a time before the internet, commuter travel and before much of the continent had been explored and developed, isolation drove many attitudes. Someone from Boston might read about the people in South Carolina, but to them, they were as far away and impossible to visit as someone on the other side of the world. The first real attempt to ‘unite' the colonies came in 1754 with the Albany Congress in upstate New York. Wary of the escalating tensions between France and Great Britain, a meeting was called for all of the colonists to discuss how to proceed. Headed by Benjamin Franklin, the Albany Plan was put forward, but ultimately rejected, which would have created a Congressional body for the colonies to act and impose legislative directives over continental affairs. This is also where we received the infamous ‘Join or Die' snake design…"
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Armand

"infamous ‘Join or Die' snake design"?

This is why the Electoral College, originally; most people would have been unable even to NAME a man from outside their state or neighborhood.

However, the key distinction is between the commercial economy (along the coast and navigable rivers) versus the subsistence economy. In 1789 about half the population were subsistence farmers who didn't use money, didn't know anything beyond their neighbors, didn't vote, and made and drank a lot of whiskey.