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Clever, but not enough. You assume, for one thing, that the inauguration of the President marked the beginning of the United States. Prior to that, Congress and the Electoral College had already met. The Constitution went into effect the instant the ninth state ratified, so your point obout North Carolina and Rhode Island applied just as much to the tenth state to ratify before it did so. None of the states yet to ratify in any way claimed to be indepdent or outside the Union, and that's what matters in countering the position that secession from the United States was equivalent to the position of the states 10-13 prior to ratification.

States 10-13 operated in the meantime under the Articles of Confederation, meaning that no federal government could tax them and that they had a right to be represented in Congress.

They were waiting to join their fellow Americans. Everyone realized they would eventually ratify. Thus, they were never treated as anything but states of the Union. No tariffs were levied against their products and at one point the Governor of Rhode Island wrote a letter to President Washington to deliver to Congress begging them not to treat RI like a separate country.

As far as taxation, RI and NC paid the same duties and tariffs on the products brought into American ports. RI may have gathered these funds at its ports for a while I don't know about that.

Since the former GOVERNMENT was dissolved (there was hardly anything to dissolve but whatever) and the NATION had formed a new one those states had no representation until they took the steps specified for representation. Like NY had no Senator's during the first Congress because it couldn't decide how to appoint them, this did not affect its being a member of the Union.

Nice little attempt to obsfusticate the issue with these delayed ratifications (which is all they were) but the fact that certain backward, corrupt and irrational politicians were able to blindly resist a change of government for a brief period shows nothing more than the insubstantiality of the reasons dragged forth to support the insupportible. With all the straws grasped for the house built with them still can't stand in a gentle breeze.

When South Carolina and Georgia were under the control of the British military during the Revolution what country were they a part of?