Hello all. I'm still preparing the details for my finished Fringe alternate universe scenario coming in the next few months. In the meantime, here's another off-the-wall scenario for the board to consider: with a POD after 1783, is there a possibility that South Carolina's statehood could be dissolved in order to be recombined with North Carolina, say during the Reconstruction Era?
My thinking is that the federal government might consider the state's legislature to be an especially traitorous one, what with its history of nullification and threats of secession. But of course I can't think of any real-world precedent for such an action being taken (especially since it would reduce the number of US senators).
Any ideas?
I'm not sure why North Carolina would want them, for one. (I for one and perfectly happy not taking them

)
The state was one of the most unionist of the lot that seceded (they didn't until after Ft. Sumter, when the unionists were discouraged by the beginning of the war that the secessionists took over).
Not to count that North Carolina was originally separated from the South to keep it from being dominated by Charleston, as many of the North Carolinians hated even the thought of being ruled by the South Carolinians (at the time more powerful). And, if merged with North Carolina (likely against the wishes of its citizens), not only are you eliminating any self-determination for even their state, you could also pollute the
That, and such an action would grant too much power to the federal government. The Loyalist South Carolinians would be seeing their own state ripped apart, too. And the federal government usurping such power that they could redraw state borders is not a precedent that many would wish to see.
The main issue is that the only way to get to this that I see would be to abandon the conceit that the southern states never left the US, and were merely insurrectionist. If they were another country's territory that is conquered, then of course they could redraw it as they see fit. So, in a truly radical reconstruction, such attempts could come to be, but they would be applied to the whole of the south.
You could also have a more unitary/centralized federal government, of course, but that isn't quite the same US, then.