Best way to have a balkanized US?

Probably a failed constitutional convention in the late 18th century.

However, I'm really not sure if the term "balkanization" would be appropriate to describe a united states that split into many smaller states and republics. If I understand my European history adequately, the Balkans were and are split into numerous self-identified and at times mutually hostile nationalities separated by ethnicity, language, and religion. The term also implies disfunction and warfare.

If the initial USA dissolved into a number of fully independent republics in the late 1700's or early 1800's, they would all be English-speaking, contain a British-descended citizenry, be dominated by Protestant Christianity in one form or another, and share common values described in the 1776 Declaration of Independence. These sucessor states may well have conflicts as they each complete with each other to settle the west, but there was an earlier history of alliance and confederation. The biggest risk of a balkanized US is that the weakened and smaller states would be unable to retain independence in the long term when faced by expansionist European empires. If they did remain independent, I suspect that a "balkanized" USA would look more like the modern EU rather than the balkans of the 19th and 20th century.
 
If the initial USA dissolved into a number of fully independent republics in the late 1700's or early 1800's, they would all be English-speaking, contain a British-descended citizenry, be dominated by Protestant Christianity in one form or another, and share common values described in the 1776 Declaration of Independence. These sucessor states may well have conflicts as they each complete with each other to settle the west, but there was an earlier history of alliance and confederation.

History shows that small states with a common heritage, language, religion, and ethnicity frequently war against each other - ancient Greece, Intermediate period Egypt, Three Kingdoms China, etc.

"A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages." - Alexander Hamilton
 
How about, ratification of Constitution fails?

By its terms, ratification by 9 states out of 13 was required.

The OTL ratifications were
1) 7 XII 1787 Delaware 30:0
2) 12 XII 1787 Pennsylvania 46:23
3) 18 XII 1787 New Jersey 38:0
4) 2 I 1788 Georgia 26:0
5) 9 I 1788 Connecticut 128:40
6) 6 II 1788 Massachusetts 187:168

POD: switch 10 votes, and Massachusetts rejects.

How will the other states react? Like Maryland (OTL 28 IV 1788, 63:11)?
 
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