[rustbucket]

Here is yet another reference to Rhode Island and North Carolina being out of the Union. Take a look at the Gazette of the United States, April 15, 1789, Image 1

This issue of the Gazette lists each of the eleven states in the then present union and separately lists the Foreign States of Rhode Island and North Carolina. Here is what is says of the Foreign States [I used bold font for the word "confederation" below so that you would notice it, and I converted the old style letter "s" to the modern letter "s"]:

FOREIGN STATES.

RHODE-ISLAND,
Is 68 miles in length, and 40 in breath, and by a Census taken in 1783, contained 51,896 inhabitants. This State has again refused to accede to a union with her sister States, and is now wholly estranged from them ;and from appearances, will long continue so, unless the measure of the iniquity of her "KNOW YE" gentry should be speedily filled up—or the delusion which has so long infatuated a majority of her citizens, should be removed.—Anxious of enjoying the protection of the union, the inhabitants of Newport, Providence and other places, are determined to sue for its protection, and to be annexed to Massachusetts or Connecticut. This dismemberment of the State it is to be desired, may be prevented by her being wholly grafted into that stock from whence through blindness she has been broken off.

NORTH-CAROLINA.
Is 758 miles in length, and 110 in breadth, and by a census taken in 1787, contained 270,000 inhabitants. A depreciated paper medium, and a deficiency of political knowledge, are considered as the causes of the anti-national spirit of this State. Her extensive frontier, and being obliged to export the greater part of her productions through Virginia, it is expected will ere long evince the necessity of her acceding to the confederation. This indeed appears already to be the predominant idea of her citizens, by some recent transactions.

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket: "Here is yet another reference to Rhode Island and North Carolina being out of the Union. Take a look at the Gazette of the United States, April 15, 1789, Image 1"

And you claim the Gazette is an official document, equivalent to a treaty recognizing Rhode Island and North Carolina as independent foreign countries?
I don't think so.

Indeed, the Gazette's language clearly does not recognize those states' independence when it talks about, "...the delusion which has so long infatuated a majority of her citizens..."

As for the word "confederation", it was never the official term used for the United States under their new Constitution.
Indeed, the Constitution itself specifically distinguishes between the old Confederation and the new Constitution.