What entities have the "full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do"? Nation-states, right?
I don't think a discussion of 18th century grammar would be worthwhile.
The singular and plural meanings of words haven't changed much since then. "Congress" used to be a plural word because of its two houses, but most other words retain their 18th century singular and plural meanings. Of course, there was the "United States are..." before the war and the "United States is..." after the war, but we know the reason for that change.
Possibly a more telling exhibition of 18th century grammar is found in the Preamble to the Constitution, where "We the People" is written in reference to all of the people of the nation, rather than "We the Peoples," in reference to the people of the several states.
Where the rubber hit the road, it was the people of the individual states, not the lumpen We-the-People of the nation, who ratified the Constitution. If we were already a Union, it would have perhaps been the lumpen We-the-People who ratified the Constitution, but we weren't and it wasn't.
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union did not create the Union - it already existed. The Articles provided a framework for the operation of confedral government.
Then why did the Articles say that the states retained their sovereignty and independence?
"Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."
If the states retained their sovereignty and independence (which they did), then this mythical preexisting Union you assert existed was a meaningless concept. If they were sovereign and free before the Articles were ratified, they could have decided to not approve the Articles. Indeed, Maryland did approve them for several long years, preventing the Articles from taking effect.
We fought World War II with the British. Are we now amalgamated into a Union with them?
The quotation you provided speaks to the dangers of disunion.
True. In that quotation, Congress acknowledged that the states were sovereign and independent and free to do whatever they wanted. Congress had less enforcement powers than my neighborhood association and no "Mythical Union" agreement to enforce in the first place.
[Dickinson]: "Article II The said Colonies unite themselves so as never to be divided by any Act whatever ..."
What were the colonies uniting themselves for if they were already united in the Mythical Union?
From the Treaty of Paris: "There shall be a firm and perpetual peace between his Brittanic Majesty and the said states..." We saw how perpetual that was.
You quote from Franklin's early proposed version of articles of Confederation, drafted in 1775. Apparently the great statesman recognized the inevitability of a greater Union even then.
Yes, I realized the 1775 date. I should have said "his" instead of "the". I don't think Franklin would have agreed with your Mythical Union. What Franklin was proposing were Articles that had the colonies reverting back to their former arrangement with Britain if Britain agreed to certain terms. If not, the Union proposed by his Articles, if approved by the colonies (which they weren't), would become perpetual. The clause having the colonies revert back to British rule was a carrot Franklin proposed to dangle before the British along with the threat of losing the colonies permanently if Britain did not agree to the Article's terms.
Don't let him retail that lumpen People of the Amalgamated Nation-State of America stuff.
"We the People" is a Hamiltonian formula written into the Preamble in the hope of realizing an amalgamation through rewriting the relationship of States to federal Union so as to abolish the States (and provide business a transparent continuum in which to operate), a principal goal of the business interests that Hamilton and Jay represented.
The method by which each State separately and autonomously ratified the Constitution, rather than in a mass, refutes the amalgamation propaganda. The ratification of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments seals it.
During the Constitutional Convention, Governeur Morris suggested mass-plebiscitary ratification by the undifferentiated Peoples of the confounded States. His motion failed for want of a second. (Elliott's Debates, vol. V, p. 356, cite courtesy of 4ConservativeJustices, here.)
Capitan is going through a course of trying us on with every refuted argument of the last two years, trying to challenge us, to see if we can't recover that damning post and that comprehensively refutational document.
The fact that Governeur Morris suggested what capitan_refugio insists happened, and that he was not at all sustained by the Constitutional Convention, is elenchus on this point.
For you, capitan, "elenchus" is the five-dollar rhetorician's word for "the perfection of refutation". As it, "it's all over, don't bring that shabby crap back in here again!"
But the test of your interpretation of this clause in the Declaration is what, exactly, did they do independent of one another? The answer is that the Continental Congress conducted the revolutionary war, established to diplomacy, and concluded the peace. The thirteen former colonies acted as one nation, as an independent nation-state would do.
This has been the point of discussion in previous threads. You can refer to the original draft of Dickinson's Articles at Avalon Project. This clause was added as a salve to mollify a couple of intransigent southern States (even then!). And in the sense that it referred to their internal affairs, as compared to the affairs of the Perpetual Union described in the Articles, it is correct.
"Indeed, Maryland did (not) approve them for several long years, preventing the Articles from taking effect.
Correct. That is why the United States continued to function during the War under the rules of the 2nd Continental Congress - which was the de facto national government.
"If the states retained their sovereignty and independence (which they did), then this mythical preexisting Union you assert existed was a meaningless concept."
The individual states were prohibited from certain functions of government. Their sovereignty was not absolute.
"What were the colonies uniting themselves for if they were already united in the Mythical (sic) Union?"
The Declaration and the Articles began is contemporaneous documents. The second sought to codify the ideals of the first.
"From the Treaty of Paris: "There shall be a firm and perpetual peace between his Brittanic Majesty and the said states..." We saw how perpetual that was."
I don't believe we (the United States of America) were the aggressor in the War of 1812. The British notoriously violated the terms of the Treaty of Paris, from the beginning, especially by failing to remove their forts from the western frontier. I believe there is a book out now which refers to the War of 1812 as the "second" war for independence.