U.S. States that could've been merged

As others have said, the constitution heavily discourages this by giving two senators to each state, regardless of population. Now if you somehow had another proposal go through whereby there's a heavy incentive to be a bigger state, another dynamic might play out. I'm not sure what incentive this would be: maybe senate allocation by population, block votes in the Senate, state governments choose the presidency on account of size, etc.

Assuming there was a benefit (in terms of power or economics) these are the states that have historically been similar to each other and geographically reasonable:

- New England (Anglo culture, commercial, Atlantic)
- New York, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania (ethnically diverse, commercial, industrial, Atlantic)
- Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina (tuckahoe culture, slave societies, tobacco economy, Atlantic)
- West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee (Scots-Irish, some slavery, inland)
- Western Pennsylvania, Ohio (freesoilers, wheat/corn, inland, industrial)
- Indiana, Illinois (freesoilers, wheat/corn, heavily agricultural, inland)
- Wisconsin, Minnesota (Scandinavian, dairy farming, tough winters)
- South Carolina, East Georgia (Caribbean culture, slavery, rice economy, Atlantic)
- Georgia, Alabama, Missisippi (heavily slave-based, cotton plantation economy, new money)
- Louisiana Southeast Texas (heavily slaved-based, sugar plantation economy, big oil reserves)

I've got bored, but you get the picture.
 
Didn't Texas also want control over bits of Oklahoma before that state was organized into a single one?
The southwest corner of Oklahoma, south of the North Fork Red River, was claimed by Texas for a while on the grounds that the North Fork was the "Red River" referenced in the Adams-Onís Treaty, but the Supreme Court found this to be erroneous.

For reasoned already outlined, merging two existing states is unlikely (notwithstanding opportunities to have pairs of OTL states never get separated from one another). An actual merging scenario I propose is to have an alternative Civil War outcome, in which peace comes with the Union hanging on to small parts of several states (for the sake of argument, East Tennessee and Nickajack--though these are probably large enough that they wouldn't bother merging them afterwards). These fragments administer themselves as separate states, either as the legitimate successors to the secedents or as union preserves like West Virginia, but then come together for administrative reasons. If this happens quickly enough, they shouldn't feel entitled to the Congressional representation of full states.
 
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