As I watched the unfolding electoral disaster on Tuesday night, a banner appeared on the New York Times website for the musical “Hamilton.”

It made me wonder what Alexander Hamilton would think of the state of the nation he helped create and the man who just took the White House. But even more, it reminded me that the battle that has consumed, tormented and once almost destroyed our country is still raging.

It is the battle between rural and urban, between those who want to keep things as they are, and those who are not part of that order and want a new one. It started when the country was born, and it has been bound up inextricably in race. It’s a battle of culture and religion, too, but race — starting with the implacable evil of slavery — has primarily driven the divisions in this country since 1789.

On Tuesday, every nonwhite group in America voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton. Actually, Clinton seems to have won the national vote by a small margin, but that’s not what counts. The Electoral College system has long been broken, but President-elect Donald Trump won decisively and we have to honor the legitimacy of his election, which is probably more than he would have done.