To Bob and All,
I see where you are going with this argument and I agree with
much of the trajectory, but...
This question of the nature of the states has to be discussed with
precise specificity as to time. The US is not a single regime but a
series of at least three; one might argue four, with one
commencing after Appomattox. The first regime, that which
declared independence, was the regime under the Second
Continental Congress. It is important to remember that
independence was declared by a UNANIMOUS vote of state
delegations to that Congress. If the Continental Congress indeed
was sovereign, it exercised its sovereignty in a peculiar manner. It
proposed to consider independence, but adopted rules that would
have allowed Rhode Island or Georgia to veto it.
The second regime was under the Articles of Confederation (1781-
1788). Under that constitution, the states were declared to be
sovereign. Jean Boudin and subsequent thinkers on the meaning
of sovereignty were in agreement that sovereignty could not be
divided because it was a kind of supremacy. If the states were
sovereign than they were independent, choosing only to ally
through a national government. One might say that in the 1780s
we were the united States, while under the Constitution we became
the United States.
Clearly, by omission and the monumental supremacy clause in
Article VI on the Constitution, union under our present higher law is
very different than anything that proceeded it. Interestingly, it was
Virginian John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1801-
1836) who defended national supremacy and state subordination
against all comers: New Englanders as well as Southerners.
In one of the Fairfax land claims cases, can't recall the name but
it was decided in 1813, Marshall laid out that Virginia had been free
to seize British owned land in 1776, as it was sovereign, but since
this seizure had not been "completed" before the 1790s, such
action was now blocked by the Constitution itself and by Jay's
Treaty, which guaranteed British property rights.
Harold
Date sent: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 10:17:06 -0700
From: Bob Huddleston <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: VA-HIST Digest - 28 Oct 2001 to 29 Oct 2001 (#2001-193)
To: [log in to unmask]
Send reply to: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
<[log in to unmask]>
> To quibble with your otherwise excellent answer, the 13 colonies were
> never 13 separate states. It was the Continental Congress that declared
> independence and that signed and approved the Treaty of Paris.
>
> Of course there was disagreement over the exact status of the states,
> especially and most importantly in their control of slavery, in how much
> independence a particular state might have. Which side a state stood on
> "independent" states depended upon which side of the slavery issue was
> being debated. Slave states argued that their citizens could take their
> property into *any* state or territory with the protection of the Federal
> government, indeed with the interference of the Federal government in Free
> States' independent right to control what went on within the boundaries of
> the Free States (see Personal Liberty Laws, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act
> and the Lemmon case). OTOH, slave states argued they could ignore treaties
> or congressional laws when it was convenient because they were
> independent. See nullification))
>
> But when a Free State nullified a pro-slavery law (i.e., Ableman v.
> Booth), the slave states supported the Federal government in overturning
> the independence of the Sovereign State of Wisconsin.
>
> As in most political issues, "independence" depended upon whose ox was
> being gored! :>)
>
> Take care,
>
> Bob
>
> Judy and Bob Huddleston
> 10643 Sperry Street
> Northglenn, CO 80234-3612
> 303.451.6276 [log in to unmask]
>
>
> In a message dated 10/29/2001 10:55:35 PM Central Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
> > I have received a
> > letter from a child who wants to know why the US was called the United
>
> > States and not the United Colonies, or some other such name. Is there a
> > simple answer to this question?
> >
> >
>
> The simplist answer is that when the "colonies" freed themselves from
> Great Britain they considered that they were no longer "colonies" but were
> independent "states" They opted to become one nation in dealing with the
> rest of the world and were thus "united". They really never gave up their
> status as "states" and are still called that by the nation and the states
> themselves although they have not been allowed to be "states" since 1865.
>
> If "states" are "united" then the logical name for the organization
> would be "The United States of America" since they were all on the North
> American continent. I cannot conceive of a more appropriate name. It
> would not be logical to call them merely America since there were ununited
> nations on the American continents. I suppose that they could have been
> named something like "Freeland" but I feel that each of the colonies who
> now considered themselves as independent states would not have been
> willing to be so consolidated together. The peoples of those times were
> more independent minded than are most people of today's USA.
>
> Gordon Reid Hale
> Grand Prairie, Texas
>
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>
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Harold S. Forsythe
Assistant Professor History
Director: Black Studies
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06430-5195
(203) 254-4000 x2379
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