Historically, there hasn't been any "former" US state, by which I mean a state which once existed, was officially recognized, had a government and congressional representation, but either was dissolved into another state or was lost to another country. What if there were?
The first thought of course is if the Confederate States had successfully broken away. But I'm interested in some other possibilities.
2) Redrawing Southern state lines after the Civil War: was there any thought post-reconstruction to completely redrawing the southern states' boundaries? Perhaps not just by splitting them up but by merging them in order to dilute their power in the US Senate?
3) Perhaps a more realistic candidate for a "lost" US state would be Yucatan. During the Polk Administration, in the midst of the Mexican-American War, the Yucatan, then an unrecognized breakaway state, petitioned the US to annex it. A bill to do so passed the House but died in the Senate. But what if it had passed? It's easy to imagine the US absorbing the Yucatan as a state de jure, with the political leaders sending senators and members of Congress to the US. But it's also easy to imagine this devolving into a long-run and costly insurgency, and with the Yucatan ultimately being abandoned as a costly and mistaken imperialistic adventure.
The first thought of course is if the Confederate States had successfully broken away. But I'm interested in some other possibilities.
2) Redrawing Southern state lines after the Civil War: was there any thought post-reconstruction to completely redrawing the southern states' boundaries? Perhaps not just by splitting them up but by merging them in order to dilute their power in the US Senate?
3) Perhaps a more realistic candidate for a "lost" US state would be Yucatan. During the Polk Administration, in the midst of the Mexican-American War, the Yucatan, then an unrecognized breakaway state, petitioned the US to annex it. A bill to do so passed the House but died in the Senate. But what if it had passed? It's easy to imagine the US absorbing the Yucatan as a state de jure, with the political leaders sending senators and members of Congress to the US. But it's also easy to imagine this devolving into a long-run and costly insurgency, and with the Yucatan ultimately being abandoned as a costly and mistaken imperialistic adventure.