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d not provide for a national government, it at least contained the germs out of which a national government might in time be developed. The complete supremacy of the general government was one important result which the members of the Convention desired to bring about. Several plans were proposed by which this supremacy should be expressly recognized in the Constitution. Both Randolph and Charles Pinckney favored giving a negative on state laws to Congress.[133] Madison suggested giving it to the Senate. Hamilton, as we have seen, proposed giving an absolute veto to the governors of the various states, who were to be appointed by the President. According to another plan this power was to be given jointly to the President and the judges of the Supreme Court. All of these proposals to give the general government in express terms the power to annul state laws were finally rejected by the Convention, no doubt for the reason that they indicated too clearly their intention to subordinate the state governments. But while declining to confer this power in express terms, it was not their intention to withhold it. As in the case of the judicial veto on congressional legislation, they relied upon control over the Constitution after its adoption to accomplish their end. The omission from the Constitution of any provision which clearly and unequivocally defined the relation of the general government to the governments of the various states was not a mere oversight. The members of the Convention evidently thought that to ensure the acceptance of the Constitution, it was necessary to submit it in a form least likely to excite the opposition of the states. They expected by controlling its interpretation to be able after its adoption to mold it into a shape more in accord with their own views. The choice of this method, though the only one by which it was possible to attain their end, involved consequences more serious and far-reaching than they imagined. It paved the way for a constitutional struggle which lasted for three-quarters of a century and finally convulsed the country in the greatest civil war of modern times. Had the Constitution in so many words expressly declared that the Federal judiciary should have the power to annul state laws, or had it given this power to some other branch of the Federal government in accordance with some one of the suggestions above mentioned, and had it at the same time expressly withheld from the
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