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