Slavery as the Primary Cause of the Civil War: the Real Lost Cause Argument.

[unionblue]

The Treaty of Paris was in 1783, when the USA was under the 1781 Articles of Confederation.

I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America."

II. Each state shall retain it's 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.

What got delegated to the Congress assembled?

 

[unionblue]

No. Article II of the AoC, expressly says that "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."

So they did not give up sovereignty, but on the contrary they expressly retained it.
Rather, they simply delegated powers, jurisdictions and rights to the United States.

And accordingly, the 1783 Treaty of Paris expressly recognized each state as free, sovereign and independent; not dependent states of a singular free, sovereign and independent state.



The Constitution doesn't say that, either.

On the contrary, each state unilaterally seceded from the AoC, in order to ratify the Constitution; and did so by its power as an independent state.

And what's more, it only required nine of them to form the new union of independent states, so clearly it couldn't have been "the people of the United States in the aggregate."
As Madison observed in Federalist No 39:



So each state ratified the Constitution by the act of its respective people; rather than its delegates, as under the AoC; or the people of all states in the aggregate, as Daniel Webster claimed in his 1830 "Contract Theory" before the US Senate.

This therefore established the people of each state, into the supreme power over their own particular independent state; and they their will was supreme over their state, however they chose to express it.

So while the Constitution does delegate more power to the federal government than before; sovereignty (i.e. supreme final authority) remains in the states themselves-- namely with the state's respective people.

So the states could unilaterally secede again, each by the will of its respective people.
Just like they did the first time in 1787-1789, to ratify the Constitution in the first place.

@SarahTheGoodWitch ,

Again (which should come as no surprise), I see nothing in your oft repeated personal opinion that I can find any agreement with in your above post.

In reply, I offer the following post I made a few years ago to a similar opinion put forth by another poster under the following topic.

When Did the States Lose Their Sovereignty?

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/when-did-the-states-lose-their-sovereignty.9584/#post-114811

I think you will find it informative and that it counters much of your assumptions in your above post.

Let me know what you think of it.

Unionblue

PS: Slavery was the cause of the American Civil War. Just thought the stated topic of the thread should be revisited.