[inquest]

Your reasoning is unpersuasive because other evidence is decisively to the contrary

Really? Cite some of this "evidence". I'm not talking about after-the-fact SCOTUS rulings. I'm talking about evidence from the debates and discussions surrounding the drawing up and adoption of the Constitution.

and the term used ("among the several states") was likely meant to avoid any implication that Congress could single out and regulate commerce in one state alone.

You really need to read up on the history of the Constitution's adoption.

While you're at it, look up the word "several". It doesn't just mean, "a whole bunch of them". It has a more specific meaning than that.

[Rockingham]

In the parlance of the era, "several states" refers to the states as a whole. What contrary meaning do you attach to the term?

Here's an example -- in a passage with several other points of interest.

The Federalist Papers : No. 45

The Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered

MADISON

The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States. If the new Constitution be examined with accuracy and candor, it will be found that the change which it proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the Union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS. The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained. The powers relating to war and peace, armies and fleets, treaties and finance, with the other more considerable powers, are all vested in the existing Congress by the articles of Confederation. The proposed change does not enlarge these powers; it only substitutes a more effectual mode of administering them.

We are deprived of a better sense of what the Framers would have done with today's commerce clause controversies because they did not see the federal power over commerce as a source of worry and controversy. Fot the better part of a hundred years, that held true.