Early Americans identified with their states more than with the national government

Evidence

In short, the central government was small and, in many ways, insignificant. It played second fiddle to the states. The states probably loomed much larger in people’s lives than the federal government. People thought of themselves as citizens of Virginia or Pennsylvania first, as Americans second. The national legal system was like the tiny brain of a giant dinosaur. There was not much in the way of a central nervous system. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 643

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes themes in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart where local community identity dominates distant colonial authority, feeding the course’s colonialism thread. — connects to: The US Constitution is the oldest written constitution still in force anywhere — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 635; Early state constitutions favored legislatures because governors embodied British rule — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 668