The latter never thought of themselves as out of the Union.
In fact R.I.'s governor wrote a letter to Washington essentially begging him to help make sure that the state was NOT treated as another country.
With both states there was no belief they would stay out of the new government just as soon as the impediments to joining were removed.
It is not like there was a real government functioning before the CC was called anyway.
This is not only B.S., but it is irrelevant B.S.
There actual status is what matters, not your idiotic Miss Cleo channeling of what they thought.
Michael Dorf writes:
Third, Lincoln claimed that the Union was older than the Constitution. In his view, it dated as far back as the Articles of Association of 1774, when the signatory parties were all colonies of England. Lincoln's claim, however, does not respond to the secessionist argument rooted in Article VII; on the secessionists' view, the Constitution implicitly affirmed a right to secede from the Union, regardless of the pre-Constitution character of the Union.Moreover, experience in the very early days of the Constitution belies Lincoln's assertion. Nationalists frequently claim that the states were never sovereign: As colonies, they were under British dominion, and they declared and won their independence as the United States. Thus, the nationalists opine, there was no time during which any of the states exercised full sovereignty. Yet, as Professor Levinson has noted, that is not entirely true: North Carolina and Rhode Island, which did not ratify the Constitution until after President Washington was inaugurated, were treated by the new national government as essentially foreign sovereigns until they formally accepted the Constitution. That treatment, Levinson argues, and I tend to agree, indicates that all the states were in an important sense sovereign when they entered into the Constitution.
Michael C. Dorf is the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia University in New York City. His book, Constitutional Law Stories, is published by Foundation Press, and tells the stories behind fifteen leading constitutional cases.
Sanford Levinson is the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law and Professor of Government at the University of Texas (Austin). An internationally eminent scholar of constitutional law, Professor Levinson also teaches and writes about professional responsibility, jurisprudence, and political theory. He is author of Constitutional Faith (Princeton 1988) and Written in Stone (Duke 1998).
[jsuati #1718] In fact R.I.'s governor wrote a letter to Washington essentially begging him to help make sure that the state was NOT treated as another country.
In place of your misbegotten revision of Governor Collins, let us get it straight what the Governor of R.I. ACTUALLY said:
Look at how it is addressed:
To the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives of the eleven United States of America in Congress assembled:
And look at some of the content:
"Our not having acceded to or adopted the new system of government formed and adopted by most of our sister States, we doubt not, has given uneasiness to them."
We are induced to hope that we shall not be altogether considered as foreigners having no particular affinity or connection with the United States; but that trade and commerce, upon which the properity of this State much depends, will be preserved as free and open between this State and the United States, as our different situations at present can possibly admit....
STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS,
In General Assembly, September Session, 1789.To the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives of the eleven United States of America in Congress assembled:
"The critical situation in which the people of this State are placed engages us to make these assurances, on their behalf, of their attachment and friendship to their sister States, and of their disposition to cultivate mutual harmony and friendly intercourse. They know themselves to be a handful, comparatively viewed, and, although they now stand as it were alone, they have not separated themselves or departed from the principles of the Confederation, which was formed by the sister States in their struggle for freedom and in the hour of danger....
"Our not having acceded to or adopted the new system of government formed and adopted by most of our sister States, we doubt not, has given uneasiness to them. That we have not seen our way clear to it, consistently with our idea of the principles upon which we all embarked together, has also given pain to us. We have not doubted that we might thereby avoid present difficulties, but we have apprehended future mischief....
Can it be thought strange that, with these impressions, they [the people of this State] should wait to see the proposed system organized and in operation? -- to see what further checks and securities would be agreed to and established by way of amendments before they could adopt it as a Constitution of government for themselves and their posterity? ...
We are induced to hope that we shall not be altogether considered as foreigners having no particular affinity or connection with the United States; but that trade and commerce, upon which the properity of this State much depends, will be preserved as free and open between this State and the United States, as our different situations at present can possibly admit....
We feel ourselves attached by the strongest ties of friendship, kindred, and interest, to our sister States; and we can not, without the greatest reluctance, look to any other quarter for those advantages of commercial intercourse which we conceive to be more natural and reciprocal between them and us.
I am, at the request and in behalf of the General Assembly, your most obedient, humble servant.
(Signed) John Collins, Governor.
His Excellency, the President of the United States.
[American State Papers, Vol I, Miscellaneous.]