Always grateful to our learned friends Kevin and Kevin for their
well-informed dialogue, may I offer a curious and forgotten sidelight that I
stumbled upon researching my book on the Louisiana Purchase?

Article 6, § 2 of the Articles of Confederation provided procedural rules in
the event that two or more states might want to establish a
sub-confederacy:  "No two or more states shall enter into any treaty,
confederation, or alliance, whatever, between them, without the consent of
the United States, in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes
for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue."

Article I, § 10 of the Constitution slammed that door shut:   "No State
shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation."

It may be significant that this prohibition originated in the Pinckney
Plan.  Not surprisingly one finds NO debate over the change in any of the
extant records of the Philadelphia convention deliberations of 1787; Max
Farrand, ed., Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (Rev. ed., New
Haven, 1937), 2: 135 and passim.

The only time I know of that this provision of Article 6 of the Articles of
Confederation was potentially brought into play was in the winter of
1785-86, when Massachusetts congressman Rufus King, Caleb Davis (at the
time, I think he was Speaker of the Massachusetts legislature) and other New
Englanders were having difficulty legislating on commercial matters for
which they could never get the requisite support of all thirteen states. In
the autumn of 1785 King proposed that they explore the prospects of a
northern sub-confederation for mercantile purposes.

   King's suggestion (which eventually morphed into a separatist intrigue
with the Spanish ambassador Diego de Gardoqui that I narrate in the book) is
detailed in Rufus King to Caleb Davis, October 17 and November 3, 1785, in
Paul H. Smith et al., eds., Letters of Delegates of Congress 1774-1789,
vol 22: 691n, 718-720.  Said intrigue tended to poison relations between the
carrying states and their southern neighbors, especially insofar as
Virginia's congressional delegation brought said intrigue to the attention
of their governor (Patrick Henry) . . . and it provides the background for
some of the Mississippi access debates in the Virginia Convention of 1788. .
. .

Best to all
-- 
Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com
On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 5:57 PM, <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> . . . you can very clearly find in the Federalist Papers the argument that
> the Constitution exists to prevent the states from dividing into regional
> confederations . . .

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