'What Kind of Nation': Clash of the Titans
Abraham Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition (i.e., ''We hold these truths . . .''), and Jefferson wrote it. More accurately, it was founded on an argument about what that proposition means. You could also say it was founded on an argument between 1776 and 1787 as the seminal moments of the American republic. Or you could say that it was founded on a disagreement over whether the term ''United States'' was a singular or plural noun. The beauty of the dialogue between Jefferson and Marshall is that it contained all these renditions. The chief virtue of ''What Kind of Nation,'' no small achievement, is to recover that dialogue in all its messy grandeur.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/books/10ELLIST.html