What the Meaning of "Are" Is

In this post, I wrote about a series of steps through which the U.S. moved toward a stronger central government throughout history. I briefly mentioned the Civil War. I'm reminded of the commentary that the late writer Shelby Foote provided for Ken Burns's PBS miniseries The Civil War. Foote talked about how the American sense of nationhood is strongly based on the outcome of the Civil War. He pointed out the tendency of Americans before the war to use "United States" as a plural noun. People would say "The United States are ..." After the war, it becamse standard to say "The United States is ...", and that remains the standard to this day. As Foote summarized it, the Civil War turned us from an "are" to an "is".