They never agreed to. 3 states including the two biggest ones which were leaders of their respective regions (NY and VA) expressly said they were NOT ceding their sovereignty AND they reserved the right to take back all of their powers whenever they wanted to. It is clear they created a government and delegated powers to that government.
Yes. Delegated. What a superior does with a subordinate. The people who drafted this and the people who drafted the Treaty of Paris....ie the Founding Fathers, were in many cases, lawyers. They knew exactly what the legal meaning of the words they chose actually was. Its not an accident they insisted that EACH state be recognized as sovereign BY NAME. It not an accident that they specifically said the states were DELEGATING some of their sovereign powers to the federal government. Non lawyers may simply brush past these terms and not understand their legal importance. The Founders understood perfectly well what they were doing.It is clear that they agreed to not exercise certain powers of sovereignty while members of the Union. There cannot be 13 or 50 different foreign policies of a single government. Agreeing not to exercise some aspect of sovereignty does not cede sovereignty, see e.g., Panama or Hong Kong. Correct. Especially when they expressly say they are not ceding their sovereignty like the states did. People should remember, the constitution was ratified only 8 years after the Treaty of Paris. They had only had their sovereignty recognized for 8 years.....and it had taken 8 long years of bloody war to get it. They sure as hell were not eager to give up something so hard won. The Articles of Confederation recognized that each state retained its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which was not by that Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. It was a unicameral government, consisting solely of a legislature, for a firm league of friendship. It is clear that the States are no longer sovereign and free. The 14th Amendment dictates that all U.S. citizens who reside in a State are citizens of that State. It also seems the States are not free to leave or reclaim their self-determination of citizenship.
Now the states have been reduced to being little more than administrative conveniences.....mere appendages of the federal government for most practical purposes. I could go on about how the 14th amendment was never legally passed....votes of some congressmen were changed and not recognized, there were some shenanigans with the Senators from Oregon, there was simply NO basis for the Southern states to be occupied, their voters disenfranchised and carpet bagger puppet governments installed and agreeing to passage of the 14th amendment being set as a condition to be considered to be back "in". That is especially the case when the entire basis on which the Northern states/federal government fought the war was that they never truly left. SO if they never left...how could they be "out"? How could conditions be set by other states that they had to jump through certain hoops to be back "in"? Where in the constitution are states or the federal government empowered to do any of this? I asked by law school profs this question years ago. They just hemmed and hawed and said some "funny business" had happened in the wake of the war. That's quite an understatement. It was a naked exercise of might makes right with no democratic legitimacy. That is the system we still live under today. The original constitution died at Appamattox. Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America". II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever. The Union became historically an indestructible, indissoluble union of indestructible, indissoluble states right after the Civil War, in a post-war case about bearer bonds.
Texas v White was a farce. Did anybody expect the Supreme Court to rule after all that bloodshed that the Union had been wrong and the Southern states right the whole time? The Justices never would have survived the week. It was a 5-3 decision. Three justices were appointed in 1862. One in 1863 and One in 1864. Gosh, who was in office then? How many were from the Southern states? Precisely 0.
It is not clear when or how the States ever ceded their sovereignty.They never agreed to.
I have never seen the mythical agreement.
People should remember, the constitution was ratified only 8 years after the Treaty of Paris. They had only had their sovereignty recognized for 8 years.....and it had taken 8 long years of bloody war to get it. They sure as hell were not eager to give up something so hard won.
Yes, the notion that it emanated from a penumbra, with no explicit statement of cession, flies in the face of the historical documents and what is contained therein, and you have correctly identified the precise point which places it beyond belief.
Now the states have been reduced to being little more than administrative conveniences.....mere appendages of the federal government for most practical purposes.
Or the oversized counties they were described as by Lincoln and that other guy.
[1] Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable—a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of their territory as they inhabit.
[1] Congressman Lincoln on January 12, 1848, arguing the unlawfulness of the War with Mexico.
Lincoln knew the truth; later he just found it expedient later to revise history.
[2] What is the particular sacredness of a State? I speak not of that position which is given to a State in and by the Constitution of the United States, for that all of us agree to—we abide by; but that position assumed, that a State can carry with it out of the Union that which it holds in sacredness by virtue of its connection with the Union. I am speaking of that assumed right of a State, as a primary principle, that the Constitution should rule all that is less than itself, and ruin all that is bigger than itself. But, I ask, wherein does consist that right? If a State, in one instance, and a county in another, should be equal in extent of territory, and equal in the number of people, wherein is that State any better than the county?
Rhode Island has more sovereign power than the largest county in Texas. Rhode Island can ratify an amendment to the Constitution. The largest county in the United States cannot gain admission to that club. The people, as States (political communities) delegated some of their sovereign powers to the Federal government they created. No county can do that.
President Lincoln's message of July 4, 1861 to the Special Session of Congress.
[3] The States have their status IN the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law, and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence, and their liberty. By conquest, or purchase, the Union gave each of them, whatever of independence, and liberty, it has. The Union is older than any of the States; and, in fact, it created them as States.
President Lincoln's message of July 4, 1861 to the Special Session of Congress.
Just how did the Union do that for Virginia? So, just what was Virginia in June 1776 after it had declared its independence, and adopted a Bill of Rights and Constitution? A free colony? There is an impossible term, if ever there was one.
Vermont gained its own independence in 1777.
[4] What is a confederation of states? By a confederacy, we mean a group of sovereign states which come together of their own free will and, in virtue of their sovereignty, create a collective entity. In doing so, they assign selective sovereign rights to the national body that will allow it to safeguard the existence of the joint union.This theoretical definition does not apply in practice, at least not without some alterations, to any existing confederation of states in the world today. It applies the least to the American Union of States. Most of these individual states never possessed any sovereignty whatsoever. They were gradually brought into the framework of the union as a whole. Therefore. the various states of the American Union constitute, in most instances smaller or larger territories that were formed for technical administrative reasons and their borders were frequently drawn with a ruler. These states never possessed any previous sovereignty of their own because that would have been impossible. These states did not come together to create the Union, but it was the Union that created these so-called states. The extensive rights of independence that were relinquished, or rather rights that were granted, to the different territories are in harmony with the whole character of this confederation of states and with the vastness of its area and overall size which is almost as large as a continent. So, in referring to the states of the American Union, one cannot speak of their state soverignty, but only of their constitutionally guaranteed rights, which we could more accurately designate as privileges.
[4] That other guy. Sounds like Lincoln, but it ain’t. It’s not constitutional rights, it’s privileges that are granted to peons by some higher power.
And then there was Ronald Reagan who stayed awake in history class.
[5] All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.
[5] President Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, Tuesday, January 20, 1981