This was written back in the times when statehood meant something. We are now a collection of federalized territories - - hopefully this new enforcement of immigration law in Arizona will reverse the decay.
Not completely. To a great extent, that was John Jay's goal.
We dodged a bullet during the Civil War. Sen. Edward Baker of Oregon -- formerly a senator from Illinois -- sat down one night at the White House for dinner with the Lincoln family. "Uncle Ned", as he was called, had joined the Union Army with the rank of brigadier general and was headed off to war.
Baker sounded off against the entire concept of states, telling Lincoln that once the rebellion was quelled, the first thing that needed to be changed in the Constitution was the abolition of the states and their replacement with federal military districts. Lincoln laughed it off and classified his old friend as a Jacobin, the term he used for Northern radicals.
Had Baker survived the Civil War, he would have voted with the most radical of Radical Republicans in the Senate, but he died in a botched retreat at Ball's Bluff.