Why does the United States have states?  I guess if our country was simply called "United", we'd all be selling airline tickets!

But seriously, why is our country divided into individual states?  I was trying to think back to the founding fathers and what their perceptions of governments must have been.  Most of them were of British descent, but England doesn't have states.  There was also a strong French influence, but I don't think France has states.  On what did they base this idea of dividing the new country's government into states?

I've searched the net (for all of about 15 minutes), but haven't found the answer.  I did find that several other countries have states including Mexico, Brazil, India, and Germany.  But I'm not sure that all those countries have states that are similar to those in the U.S.  Some countries have provinces such as Canada and Australia.  Then there's the strange arrangement between England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom: none of them are states, but it almost seems like a country within a country within a country!

While this information is fascinating, I still haven't been able to find the answer to my question.  Why "states" back in 1776?  To me, it seems like it would have been more natural for Benjamin Franklin and his team to have simply created one country.  On the other hand, by 1776, the original colonies had already developed their separate identities and separate names.  Still, I wonder what model the founding fathers were using when they came up with the distinction of naming the "United States".

One more online search turned up this article.  As late as 1775, Benjamin Franklin was using the term "United Colonies of America".    It was the following year that "Richard Henry Lee of Virginia made the proposal in the Congress on 6/17/1776 to declare that the United Colonies should be free and independent states".  Three committees were created to draft documents, and together they came up with the name "United States of America".  I suppose that by 1775 and 1776, the colonies were old enough that they were already established as separate entities.  Perhaps the question should be inverted.  Instead of asking why one country was formed with states, we should be impressed that the Founding Fathers had the foresight to join these separate colonies/states into one unified nation. 

How would things be different today if they had formed 13 separate countries?  There couldn't have been a Civil War, but what if there had been something even more destructive?  Imagine these 13 countries fighting over the westward expansion!  Or, more likely, England might have regrouped and returned to take back the individually weak colonies.  Shutter the thought!  Just think, if that had happened, we'd all be speaking "English" today!