The seventh and last article of the United States Constitution describes the process by which the entire document is to be ratified and take effect. Upon its ratification by conventions from at least nine states of the thirteen existing at the time, the Constitution would take effect among those states. This process posed a danger: if nine states ratified, but not all thirteen, the country would be split into two possibly incontiguous ones.
One topic that Article Seven might have discussed but did not is the issue of secession. One of the controversies underlying the Civil War was the question of whether a state that has ratified the Constitution leave the Union.
