DANIEL J. ELAZAR

The more than continental stretch of the American domain is given form and
character as a federal union of fifty different states whose institutions order
the American landscape. The existence of these states made possible the
emergence of a continental nation where liberty, not despotism, reigns and
self-government is the first principle of order. The great American republic
was born in its states as its very name signifies. America's first founding was
repeated on thirteen separate occasions over 125 years, from Virginia in 1607
to Georgia in 1732, each giving birth to a colony which became a self-gov-
erning commonwealth. Its revolution and second founding was made by
those commonwealths, now states, acting in congress, and its constitution
was written together and adopted separately. As the American tide rolled
westward from the Atlantic coast, it absorbed new territories by organizing
thirty-seven more states over the next 169 years. Most of the American states
are larger and better developed than most of the world's nations. Each state
has its own story and is a polity with its own uniqueness.

The American states exist because each is a unique civil society within
the common American culture. They were first given political form, and
then acquired their other characteristics. Each has its own constitution, its
own political culture, its own relationship to the federal union and to its sec-
tion. These in turn have given each its own law and history; the longer that
history, the more distinctive the state.

It is in and through the states, no less than the nation, that the great themes
of American life play themselves out. The advancing frontier and the con-
tinuing experience of Americans as a frontier people, the drama of American
ethnic blending, the tragedy of slavery and racial discrimination, the politi-

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