[phi11yguy19]

sure, AC, Chapter 7 note 51 - Lincoln's address to Congress on July 4, 1861:

"Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union.... Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "State rights," asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the "sovereignty" of the States, but the word even is not in the National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions.... The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can do so only against law and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase the Union gave each of them whatever of independence and liberty it has. The Union is older than the States, and, in fact, it created them as States." [emphasis in original].

Seeing how each state had to RATIFY the constitution to accept it (several years after it went into effect), it's amazing to hear him say that none were States before the Constitution or that they didn't obtain independence separately (contrary to their treaty with Britain).

[K-Stater]

Seeing how each state had to RATIFY the constitution to accept it (several years after it went into effect), it's amazing to hear him say that none were States before the Constitution or that they didn't obtain independence separately (contrary to their treaty with Britain).

So...you're claiming that Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama and Tennessee and Arkansas and Florida and Texas were all states before they were admitted to the Union?