After considering how the Constitution could help the nation stand up to foreign powers, Hamilton turns in Federalist 6=7 to possible tensions between the states.His starting point is that men are rotten and can’t be trusted.

A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.

He then lists several historic wars of ancient Greece and medieval Europe which were caused by ambition, vindictiveness and rapine. When he comes to the point, Hamilton focuses his contempt on the foolishness of those who believed that American would have peace just because it was a republic:

The genius of republics (say they) is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humors which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.

Hamilton then dips back into history, noting that Carthage, Athens, Venice and England were all, in some manner, republics, but were all fond of war. And from this he concludes, somewhat mysteriously, that everybody else is wrong:

From this summary of what has taken place in other countries, whose situations have borne the nearest resemblance to our own, what reason can we have to confide in those reveries which would seduce us into an expectation of peace and cordiality between the members of the present confederacy, in a state of separation? Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses and evils incident to society in every shape? Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?

Hamilton’s purpose, remember, is to urge adoption of the Constitution. At the time he was writing, the Constitution was untried and radical. There was no proof based on any experience that it would work. So Hamilton stressed heavily that every other plan had failed to maintain world peace, so adopting the Constitution was the only sensible path.

Hamilton eventually gets specific to American circumstances. He points to three special causes that would cause trouble in the future if the nation devolved into independent states or to three or four regional confederation of states. These are: managing the national debt that was built up during the Revolution, handling trade within and between the states (e.g., whether the port of New York would be able to pass duties and taxes on to New Jersey and Connecticut, and, most of all, the dispensation of western land (meaning Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama and other parts further west).

We have a vast tract of unsettled territory within the boundaries of the United States. There still are discordant and undecided claims between several of them, and the dissolution of the Union would lay a foundation for similar claims between them all. . . . It has been the prudent policy of Congress to appease this controversy, by prevailing upon the States to make cessions to the United States for the benefit of the whole. This has been so far accomplished as, under a continuation of the Union, to afford a decided prospect of an amicable termination of the dispute. A dismemberment of the Confederacy, however, would revive this dispute, and would create others on the same subject.

Hamilton was completely right about this. Several of the original colonies claimed land extending far west. Six of them claimed land as far west as the Mississippi River.

http://www.virginiaplaces.org/boundaries/cessions.html

Under the Articles of Confederation, the states ceded all that western land back to the national government. Hamilton cautions that if the states break apart, the disputes would emerge again and states would reclaim their western lands stretching to the Mississippi. We might ask whether this is not merely an argument for keeping the status quo (since the Articles of Confederation had been adequate to deal with the issue).

We can cheerfully admit that the Constitution has been effective and successful throughout the nation’s history in managing westward expansion and statehood issues. All the states after the original 13 joined the union without much fuss. Texas was an exception to this — but that dispute was with Mexico, and not between states. Missouri and Kansas and a few other states that joined the Union in the 1850s were contentions. But that was because of slavery, and not because of territorial borders of the Constitutional process of statehood.

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