These Founding Fathers Were Frenemies. Maybe We Can Learn Something.

Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello is one of the most beloved sites in America, drawing more than 300,000 visitors a year up a steep mountain road to enjoy majestic views of the Virginia Piedmont and house tours that can feel like stepping into its creator’s complicated mind.

But in 1775, it was a muddy construction site — and, as a guide told a tour group gathered on its front portico on a recent morning, a pretty good metaphor for the not-quite-born United States itself.

“Things were just getting started, and they weren’t going great,” the guide said. After a decade of escalating tensions between Britain and the colonists, a shooting war had broken out in Massachusetts. The Continental Congress formed an army, appointing an upstanding Virginian, George Washington, to lead it.