[normanpubbie]

Your claim is misleading. Yes, the Articles of Confederation in Article I states:

The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America."

And in Article II, the Articles state among other things that each state retains its sovereignty.

The expression "the United States in Congress assembled" occurs 28 times (by my count) in the A of C.

But the word "president" occurs just once in this document, in Article IX.

In that article, the A of C gave "the United States in Congress assembled" the authority to create 'A Committee of the States' with one member from each state, to meet when the Congress was out of session. This committee could appoint officers, including a president of the governing authority. The president was not referred to in the Articles of Confederation as the President of the United States of America. Period.

Some on this board have tried to conflate the stile of "The United States of America" from Article I with the presiding officer of the committee mentioned in Article IX. Some FReepers like to conflate unrelated things to prove their points of view. It's a free country.

[Lucky Dog]

It's a free country.

In deed, it is... A fact for which I am grateful on a routine basis, especially to all those, such as my son, who stand in harm's way, to keep it so.

Some FReepers like to conflate unrelated things to prove their points of view.

Obviously, you intend to imply that conflating [con⋅flate  [kuhn-fleyt] –verb (used with object), -flat⋅ed, -flat⋅ing. to fuse into one entity; merge: to conflate dissenting voices into one protest.] is undesirable as you would contend that the two things are unrelated. However, I must disagree with you.

The President to which you refer is a presiding officer. It obvious that such is not the case for just the committee. Therefore, if the Congress is not in session (if it were one could argue that he would be presiding over Congress) he must be presiding over the something else.

Given the phrase in which this President is designated:

...appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the United States under their direction—to appoint one of their members to preside

It seems to me that the President so named is in fact presiding over other civil officers and affairs of the United States. Ergo, he would be the President of the United States.