Technically, Canada is pre-approved to join the US

OK, bear with me.

First of all, I’m not a Constitutional scholar and I’m sure there’s a lot of nuance I’m skipping for the sake of fun. Second, there’s a big lead up to the payoff, but it’s all kind of amusing.

After the Civil War, there was a lot of disagreement about how to treat the Southern States. Are they conquered nations? Should they be demoted from states to territories or protectorates? Or are we going to pretend this never happened, Constitutionally? (spoiler: the last one)

Perhaps taking advantage of the confusion, the post Civil War State of Texas decided to renege on a deal it made during the War. To raise money for military operations, the State had sold some bonds (what’s a bond? you can look that up, but it’s like stocks, intangible financial property documented on paper) to some dudes. Now, the States wanted to get those bonds back, for free, and sued the buyers, claiming the sale was invalid for a number of reasons. As one dissenting Supreme Court Justice said, it was like a “plea of temporary insanity.” Damn, Texas, way to welch! (Uh, no offense intended to any Welsh-Americans with Texas roots, I doubt this was cooked up by a Welshman).

Now, the post-Civil War Supreme Court did not want to reward those dudes for supporting the south, but if you said that one official act that Texas took during the war was null, it was going to mean that every single government document from a dog license to a parking ticket was going to be rendered invalid - total chaos, cats and dogs living together, yadda yadda. So they made a call on the question I described above - and said the secession never legally happened. The Confederacy never legally existed and the states involved were simply in a state of insurrection for those years.

And what did they point to for this decision, you ask?

OK, so you remember how the Constitution starts with “in order to form a MORE PERFECT union” (my caps)? What the F does that mean? Were we just being mean girls, trying to neg our neighboring countries, by saying their governments are perfect, but ours is going to be MORE perfect than theirs, nyah nyah? No, but for reals, what the Constitution is admitting is that it is merely an extension of the Articles of Confederation. After the nascent US declared its independence in 1776, it had to put SOMETHING into place until a full-on Constitution could be written. So the Articles of Confederation was our placeholder organizing national document for 12 years. By referencing the AoC, the Constitution re-affirmed that we had actually HAD a country for those previous 12 years; we weren’t just in limbo until 1789.

OK, so SCOTUS looks back at the AoC and sees that it says that the individual States are forming a “perpetual union”, meaning that there was no out, no backsies, no divorce or annulment. Therefore, the southern states never had any legal right to actually BE a separate government. They proclaimed that anything the Texas government did during the period of secession will be considered an official government act (sorry, you can’t get your marriage annulled due to Civil War) … except for treasonous acts, which includes, you guessed it, selling bonds to raise war funds. So the bond sales were nullified, returned to Texas, but all of our dog licenses are still valid, despite saying “Confederate State of Texas” on the certificate.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CANADA?

Oh, right, I forgot the punch line. So, Article 11 of the AoC says: “Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the united states, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine states.” What this means is that Canada has a standing invitation to join the US whenever it wants, and this admission is automatic; they don’t need the states to approve it, like we would for an amendment to the Constitution. And because SCOTUS reaffirmed the foundational importance of the AoC in 1869, they also reaffirmed the right of Canada to automatically join whenever they want.

TRUE FACTS!