Yes, we do disagree.
And if the remaining states had not agreed that would have meant the dissolution of the previous Union and the establishment of one or more new Unions.
The old Union created by the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union in 1781 stopped conducting business once nine states seceded from it and formed a new Union under the Constitution despite the fact that the Articles prohibited that. The Union under the Articles was no more.
The new Congress under the Constitution wanted to treat states that had not joined the new Union as foreign countries. That is consistent with what Washington had said about North Carolina being out of the Union. If NC and RI were in that mythical perpetual Union of yours, why did Congress want to treat them as foreign countries? From Congress on September 12, 1789 [my emphasis below]:
And be it further enacted, That all rum, loaf sugar, and chocolate, manufactured or made in the states of North Carolina, or Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and imported or brought into the United States, shall be deemed and taken to be subject to the like duties, as goods of the like kinds, imported from any foreign state, kingdom, or country are made subject to.
NC and RI could have gone their own way and not joined the other states in the new Union. They could have remained as separate states or joined each other is some additional new Union.
[You quoting RI's ratification document]:
Done in Convention, at Newport in the County of Newport, in the State of Rhode-Island and Providence-Plantations, the twenty ninth day of May, in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety, and in the fourteenth year of the Independence of the United States of America.(Emphasis added.)
You argue that this indicates "they believed the States remained in Union and had done so since 1776." I don't see it that way. In 1776 they were the united States of America, not the United States of America. The Declaration acknowledged that "as Free and Independent States [plural], they [plural] have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States [plural] may of right do."
The item below is from the letter the Continental Congress sent to the states in 1777 asking that they agree to the Articles of Confederation [my emphasis below]. All of them did by 1781.
...Let them [the Articles] be candidly reviewed under a sense of the difficulty of combining in one general system the various sentiments and interests of a continent divided into so many sovereign and independent communities, under a conviction of the absolute necessity of uniting all our councils and all our strength, to maintain and defend our common liberties . . .
If the states were already your "Union" rather than simply in a wartime alliance, why would the Continental Congress need to plead with them to agree to the first real act of formal Union, the Union under the Articles?
If the states were independent and sovereign as the Continental Congress made clear, then they were not subject to your mythical Union or the Continental Congress itself. Otherwise, they would not have been independent and sovereign.
The fact that all states eventually decided to join the new Union doesn't mean it is the same Union as the one under the Articles that went belly up. They were quite different Unions. A better statement would be that the same states decided to leave one Union and join another one. Forgive me, but I trust George Washington on this matter.
My wife and I didn't make it. She passed what seems like not too long ago. Sometimes it seems more recent than other times.
Sorry to hear that.
I suggest we end this discussion. It's been a good discussion, but I doubt we will convince each other. I have other things I need to be doing, and I'm sure you do too. I've got to be off the board to attend to those other things.
“I suggest we end this discussion. It’s been a good discussion, but I doubt we will convince each other.”
Fair enough and agreed.