Hapsburg, my point (about D.C. and the territories) was that I think their existence was (still is, in the case of D.C.) inconsistent with the idea that the U.S. was just a league of independent states like the European Union. At least in those areas, the federal government was the only sovereign (the territorial governments were exercising power delegated to them by Congress which could at any time be taken away; Congress regularly rearranged territorial boundaries... D.C. was run directly by Congress, with no local government at all except for a territorial phase in the 1870s which ended when the territorial government became hopelessly corrupt, until it finally got a mayor, city council, and the like in the 1970s). Which would leave the the-states-are-independent school of thought having to recognize a...grasping for words...direct congressional domain consisting of the territories and D.C.
It's also worth considering that states outside the original thirteen were really created by the U.S. Even in the antebellum South, secessionists had to go through mental gymnastics to establish that, say, Mississippi had ever delegated certain attributes of its "independence" to Washington and could take them back at any time.
It's also worth considering that states outside the original thirteen were really created by the U.S. Even in the antebellum South, secessionists had to go through mental gymnastics to establish that, say, Mississippi had ever delegated certain attributes of its "independence" to Washington and could take them back at any time.