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.
Sure you can - it's rather simple. The Supremacy clause states, 'This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; ...'
Unless you have a delegated power preventing a state from exercising a power, per the 10th (superseding any prior verbiage) such power remains with the state.
Several important considerations have been touched in the course of these papers, which discountenance the supposition that the operation of the federal government will by degrees prove fatal to the State governments. The more I revolve the subject, the more fully I am persuaded that the balance is much more likely to be disturbed by the preponderancy of the last than of the first scale......
The State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organization of the former. Without the intervention of the State legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all. They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will, perhaps, in most cases, of themselves determine it. The Senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the State legislatures. Even the House of Representatives, though drawn immediately from the people, will be chosen very much under the influence of that class of men, whose influence over the people obtains for themselves an election into the State legislatures. Thus, each of the principal branches of the federal government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious than too overbearing towards them. On the other side, the component parts of the State governments will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very little, if at all, to the local influence of its members......
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. 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.
http://federalistpapers.com/federalist45.html
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to convene a national recension of the Federalist papers, to revisit its headings and topics seriatim and audit the prospectus, as it were, in view of actual performance.
You make the States sound like some sort of political Barcalounger -- a convenient thing to have around, until you trip over it. They are a lot more than that, but then amalgamators like you and Non-Sequitur have never had any use for States anyway, as N-S posted above. They are an impediment to a Phalangist exercise of unlimited and illimitable federal power, so you derogate them despite their historical and substantive presence.
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?
Red herring. Of course they did. They did not, however, as you so fervently wish they had, annihilate themselves when they formed the Union.
...the Constitution is more than a mere league of independent states.
Of course it is. But Madison meant what he said in Federalist 45, quoted above, when he said that "[t]he State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organization of the former."
The States are the organic entities of common interest and allegiance that preexisted the Union of the Constitution, and it was to the People of those States that the Framers had recourse, when they sought the People's assent to form the new Union.
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.
One point I'll "fight" about is your use of the word "relinquish". They delegated and foreswore for themselves the exercise of certain enumerated powers (and, Marshall insisted later, certain ancillary ones -- and, Franklin Roosevelt insisted much later, the power to weigh pigs and produce!), but they didn't alienate them forever. Rather, as everyone from Hamilton to Madison to young John Marshall understood at the time, powers not granted to the new Union remained with the States and their People. Thus Marshall, in 1788:
The state governments did not derive their powers from the general government; but each government derived its powers from the people, and each was to act according to the powers given it. Would any gentleman deny this? He demanded if powers not given were retained by implication. Could any man say so? Could any man say that this power was not retained by the states, as they had not given it away? For, says he, does not a power remain till it is given away?
-- Elliot's Debates, Vol. III, p. 419
And here is Hamilton in Federalist 84, on the general subject of objections to the Constitution, addressing the topic of the Bill of Rights:
It is evident, therefore, that, according to their primitive signification, they [bills of rights] have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain every thing they have no need of particular reservations ...bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?
And finally, the People of the United States did not give the federal government a threshhold or irrevocable grant of power, but a temporally durable, perpetually renewing trust of power that the People have the right and power to revoke at any time, and resume their powers intact. This is what the departing States did in 1861, whereupon they were set upon by Abraham Lincoln and his political machine, wielding the United States Army as their own instrument of revolution.
In the American Civil War, the revolution of secession was overreached by a coup d'etat of the servant against the master, and the whole American People lost both war and coup, not least the men of the Union Army who fought, they thought, to preserve the Union, but actually to end it.
The degree and kind of that loss would be expressed, over the coming century, in the progressive marginalization, trivialization, and demoralization of the American People, as what they had lost, or rather what the new ruling class had taken from them, began to sink in.