There's some agreement about where we started, but a bit of divergence about where we're headed. That's not really a new thing in the United States, and a lot of people hope the divergence is not great enough to lead to a shooting war.
Colin Woodard, a journalist, casts his gaze back into American history in a lot of his work, looking at the disparate threads that came to weave the fabric of the United States together.
And Woodard picks up the story in the 19th century, as the last of the 1776 generation died out. That's when the proper future of the republic became a source of great conflict.
Woodard's book on the period is Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. We replay his interview from 2020 here.