[You] They had no such unilateral powers.
a Sure they did. But if you don't think so, show me where they gave them up. You can't, but you owe it to us to show us in black letters on white paper where the States gave up the power of sitting in convention as a People and resuming their sovereign powers. You can't, but you have to show us.
[Me] There was no rebellion. Italy doesn't rebel against France by telling France to stick it.
[You] France and Italy are both sovereign nations. The confederacy was not.
The States that formed it, were. As soon as they withdrew from the Union, every one of the seceding States were as they had been before ratification, with this exception: the old Union of the Articles of Confederation were no more, so they were completely independent and unbound by any treaty, constitution, or compact.
[You again, betraying weakness] Other than the original 13, states did not join anything. They were admitted, and only with the permission of a majority of the other states.
On the same basis as every other State, including the original 13. Once they were States, they were States. No more, no less, with the same powers and the same degree of sovereignty.
The majority of the other States did not "permit" Texas to join the Union in 1836. Led by the execrable and spiteful Yankee (but I repeat myself) John Quincy Adams (there, I did it again), Texas was a State nevertheless, and exercised her sovereignty outside the Union by contending in arms with Mexico in continuous border disputes, in driving the frontier westward, in keeping and maintaining a Navy, and in accepting the placement of foreign legations on her soil.
It was Texas's actions on its claims in New Mexico that made the Yankees finally see the light: better a State in the Union, than a competitor outside it.
Texas was admitted in 1846, and the U.S. flag was finally hauled up in 1847. But Texas, believe me, was every inch the peer of the United States, a fact which is recognized to this very day by the act of admission: Texans have the right to fly our flag at the same height as that of the United States in every venue and on every occasion.
Furthermore, Texas was no less a State before or after admission, than the United States. Ditto the other 49 States, no matter what Harry Jaffa tells you in the confessional.
You aren't talking to Piedmontese peasants here, bub, no matter how much you wish you were.
No they did not. They never had them.
They were, in their deluded minds perhaps. But in the eyes of the rest of the world they were nothing more than a rebellious part of the US.
On the same basis as every other State, including the original 13. Once they were States, they were States. No more, no less, with the same powers and the same degree of sovereignty.
No, the original 13 agreed to abide by the same restrictions as those admitted later, when they ratified the Constitution. States don't join, they are admitted. They are allowed into the body politic only with the permission of the other states. Same with leaving.