With a PoD after 1788, have a US state consisting entirely of one city (optionally with suburbs/hinterland). It can't be Washington, DC.
Idea: city-states in the US
- Thread starter My Username is Inigo Montoya
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New York City (and suburbs) have tossed the idea of ceding from the rest of New York a few times (Long Island optional)
What would upstate New York feel about the Metropolitan area seceding? On one hand they wouldn't get completely swamped electorally and thus would have more control of their affairs and would still be a pretty big state. On the other hand the would cease to benefit from tax transfers out of the metropolis. If enough people from non-New York City New York and New York City agreed to support it I find it hard to imagine the US Congress would have a problem.
I read somewhere about the Chicago area splitting from the rest of Illinois. I'd imagine Cook, Lake, DuPage, and maybe Will counties could make it up. Indiana's Lake county could join too.
Go Go Chicagoland! It's already practically a city state, what with the mayors only paying lip service to springfield and all.
Rhode Island resident here - not really. You could assume a city of Greater Providence that includes Warwick, Cranston, Johnston, and Conventry all part of Providence (I don't really see any difference between the cities myself and wouldn't mind the cities merging into 1), but Woonsocket, Westerly, Kingston, Warren, Bristol, and Newport are definitely NOT part of Providence.
The Mormons get rounded up under an even bigger escalation and fuck up by Buchanan and confined to a Salt Lake Valley ghetto. The Salt Lake Valley is eventually admitted as a state in apology to the Mormons while the other parts of Utah had been divided amongst surrounding states.
You only need the extraordinary constitutional measures if you're carving the city-state out of an existing state. So the best route would be for the US to acquire a city without also acquiring anything else nearby at the same time.
Geographically, you've got to look to Canada here, particularly Victoria or Vancouver. But the trick is that the easiest time to get that land into the US is before Oregon was a state, and so they'd just end up part of Oregon. So how do you get a war with Canada (/Britain) after 1859? The standard 'Britain and France support the confederacy' scenario usually doesn't end with the kind of US victory that would let them seize land. I guess possibly a 'US allies early with Germany and/or Russia; the US Civil War sparks a world war' scenario might do the job.
Geographically, you've got to look to Canada here, particularly Victoria or Vancouver. But the trick is that the easiest time to get that land into the US is before Oregon was a state, and so they'd just end up part of Oregon. So how do you get a war with Canada (/Britain) after 1859? The standard 'Britain and France support the confederacy' scenario usually doesn't end with the kind of US victory that would let them seize land. I guess possibly a 'US allies early with Germany and/or Russia; the US Civil War sparks a world war' scenario might do the job.
Their are no 'extraordinary constitutional measures' involved, the Constitution very clearly states that a new state can be formed from the territory of one or more existing states if the legisltures of the state(s) affected agree and the Congress agrees.
That's what I meant. Doing it with new territory only requires Congress.
Although, honestly, it's hard to pretend that that requirement in the Constitution means anything at all, really, considering the case of West Virginia...