How Federal Is the Constitution?

~How Federal is the Constitution?~ To some the query doesn't mean anything anymore. It's like asking how centralizing is the Constitution, because the semantics of the word itself has been prostrated, and "Federal" connotes centralized Big Government in the popular imagination. But this is an inquiry into the historicity and original intentions animating that noble document. The national polity, advocated by Hamilton covertly behind closed doors at Philadelphia in 1787, called for a national polity with plenary powers on all legislative objects whatsover. This was rejected. As historian Herbert Storing observed, the Federalists conceded "the historic and legal priority of the states." Robert Livingston remarked, "we have thirteen distinct governments." James Iredell said of the Constitution, it encompassed "thirteen governments confederated, upon a republican principle." Madison acquiesced in noting: "Each state, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its voluntary act." Further proof of the integral nature of state sovereignty to American federal system is found within the Amendment process, which itself is dependent upon the consent of the state legislatures assembled in convention. As arch-Federalist Fisher Ames declared: "A consolidation of the States would subvert the new Constitution... Too much provision cannot be made against consolidation. The State Governments represent the wishes and feelings, and local interests of the people. They are the safeguard and ornament of the Constitution; they will protract the period of our liberties; they will afford a shelter against the abuse of power, and will be the natural avengers of our violated rights." For the founders, the federal polity was distinguished between a national polity, and though Madison conceptualized the American polity as a hybrid "compound republic" embodying both the characteristics of a federal and national polity, historical evidence shows the overarching federal character of the Union as the Union was framed at its inception. David Elazar and Gary McDowell produced the best essays in my humble opinion in favor of the federal character of the Union.