Not really. The attendees of the Philadelphia Convention, of the ratification conventions in Virginia, New York, and elsewhere, and of the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1830 all understood who the People were, and that they were the People of their State.
That is the fundamental building-block of the American political and constitutional system.
Or do I have to quote Federalist 39 yet again, one more weary time?
But once you break with the Constitution, as you do break with it to "determine your own fate" outside existing constitutional constraints, all bets are off, and everything from the smallest village to the largest ethnic group can declare itself a "People" with its own destiny and right to self-determination.
No, only the States are Peoples. Cities aren't. Basic colonial and American history, again.
Your point about defending sovereignty is well-taken, and one of the arguments for the Constitution was security, and the security of freedom. I guess they just didn't install adequate safeguards against getting drygulched by a lawyer-president.
Which is basically what happened.
Lincoln put together a bogus lawyer's theory about the Union's predating, and therefore somehow superordinating the States, meaning that the Union -- the United States Government -- was the real Sovereign instead of the People, never mind the Conventions and the Federalist, and so it could tell the People what to do, and then he picked a fight he figured he could win, using his theory and the political wedge issue he "discovered" in 1854 to justify sending hordes of fresh immigrants south to burn out his marks.
Worked slick, except for Booth. Hazards of war, I guess.
The states undoubtedly are a fundamental building-block of our system, but it's not that states have some divine right to prevail over other polities. It's that we need a division of power between federal and local authorities, and the states provide that.
You apparently want to make the decisions of British Kings prevail over those of the Founding Fathers. If King Charles chartered separate colonies under the British Crown are they forever to be sovereign with no ability to form a more general government? If King George didn't want to recognize a federal union but ony separate states, does that mean we didn't have and could never form such a union?
Or do I have to quote Federalist 39 yet again, one more weary time?
Not if you're going to get it wrong again: "The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both." Thus the Constitution is more than a mere league of independent states.
They say the Civil War was fought over a word: "The United States is" versus "The United States are." I don't think that's quite right. 20th century American usage differs from 18th century British, so we'd be saying "is" even without fighting a war.
But it looks like you're willing to fight over the word "sovereignty." One problem is that the states relinquished most of the attributes of sovereignty at the beginning of the Republic -- separate armies, navies, currencies, embassies, treaty-making, import regulations, etc. The other problem is that you can't reconcile the Constitution's "Supremacy Clause" (Article VI, Clause 2) with state sovereignty:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.