Every territory that has already become a state struggled for statehood. Some had anti-statehood actions within the territory, while others had resistance from Congress or even from popular opinion within the states. We might expect that the 13 original British colonies all automatically became states when the United States first came into being, but the union actually took place over a period of years as they ratified the U.S. Constitution. In fact, some of the first 13 states actually had struggles as well.
Arguments against statehood for North Carolina
Rhode Island was the last of the 13 colonies to be admitted, but North Carolina joined the Union just a year prior. Many of the objections came not from the United States hesitating to admit North Carolina, but from citizens of North Carolina hesitating to join the Union by ratifying the Constitution.
Some of the objections to ratifying the Constitution were not about an unwillingness to be part of the United States. They were about dissatisfaction with the Constitution itself. Like many of the former colonists, the people of North Carolina wanted a Bill of Rights. The delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, known as the Federalists, had several reasons for not including a bill of rights from the start.
First, they believed that it was unnecessary. The Constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government, and any power that is not given to it in that document is left up to the states and the individual citizens. It was a document intended specifically to limit the powers of the central government. Alexander Hamilton wrote, “Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”
Second, they worried that listing the rights people should have would make it possible to say that there were rights people shouldn’t have because they had not been listed. This kind of controversy has in fact come up. For example, the Bill of Rights which was added to the Constitution does not list a right to privacy, and it has been argued that this means Americans have no right to privacy.
Some of the states already had constitutions which contained a Bill of Rights. The group writing the U.S. Constitution believed that the national constitution should not repeat or conflict with the documents being written by the states. In the end, a Bill of Rights was added in 1791, just two years after North Carolina joined the Union. The states that hesitated because of the lack of the Bill of Rights were assured that one would be added, and it was.
But some in North Carolina also worried about having a powerful central government. What if the Senate turned out to be like the aristocrats in their native England? What if the president decided to behave like a king or emperor? Wouldn’t the ability to tax the states and to keep a standing army give so much power to the central government that it might endanger the states?
The other side of the argument was that without some measure of power, the central government could not defend the states or deal effectively with foreign nations. North Carolina was a relatively affluent state, but it knew that independence would be dangerous. Spain, France, and even Britain were still present in the America, and debates in North Carolina mentioned battles near their state and in their “back counties.” North Carolina’s leaders realized that they were not as powerful as Spain or France and couldn’t stand up to those or other nations on their own.
These issues were worked out and North Carolina decided to become part of the United States officially.
Technical problems
By the time Rhode Island and North Carolina got around to ratifying the Constitution, it was already in force. Ratification by just nine states was the requirement written into the Constitution, and nine states had ratified it by 1788, a year before North Carolina signed on. At that point, under the Constitution, Congress should have officially admitted the new states by passing an Act. They didn’t.
James Madison wrote, “Each state, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act.” That is, states are sovereign, and become part of the federation of states by ratifying the Constitution.
Once the first nine states had formed the Union by ratifying the Constitution, the latecomers would have been joining a pre-existing Union. This seems to suggest that the individual states could be thought of as independent nations between their founding and their ratification of the Constitution and entry into the Union. It is this thinking that makes some historians say that North Carolina was independent for a couple of years before becoming a state of the Union.
If so, it would have taken an Act of Congress to make North Carolina a state — just as Acts were required to admit the later states. Congress properly admitted all the states after Rhode Island, and nobody objected to the irregular admission of North Carolina. In fact, many historians agree that as an original colony, North Carolina had a right to enter just by ratifying the Constitution, as did all the original 13 states.
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