On July 1, 1776, as the Declaration of Independence was about to be published, its author complained to a friend that it was painful, at such a fraught moment, to be in Philadelphia, “300 miles from one’s country.”
Thomas Jefferson’s sentiment, expressed casually in a private letter, reveals an arresting fact—namely, that the new nation did not yet exist even in the mind of the man who announced its birth. This inchoate quality was obvious in the sense that the 13 former colonies, united only in their bid for independence, didn’t create a genuine national government for more than a decade. But Jefferson’s remark hit on something more elemental, the geopolitical space that a citizen intuitively recognizes as “one’s country.”
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