Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1


[Volume 2, Page 253]

Document 8

Luther Martin, Genuine Information

1788Storing 2.4.43

But even this provision apparently for the security of the State governments, inadquate as it is, is entirely left at the mercy of the general government, for by the fourth section of the first article, it is expressly provided, that the Congress shall have a power to make and alter all regulations concerning the time and manner of holding elections for senators; a provision, expressly looking forward to, and I have no doubt designed for the utter extinction and abolition of all State governments; nor will this, I believe, be doubted by any person, when I inform you that some of the warm advocates and patrons of the system in convention, strenuously opposed the choice of the senators by the State legislatures, insisting that the State governments ought not to be introduced in any manner so as to be component parts of, or instruments for carrying into execution, the general government: Nay, so far were the friends of the system from pretending that they meant it, or considered it as a federal system, that on the question being proposed, "that a union of the States, merely federal, ought to be the sole object of the exercise of the powers vested in the convention;" it was negatived by a majority of the members, and it was resolved, "that a national government ought to be formed"--afterwards the word "national" was struck out by them, because they thought the word might tend to alarm: and although now, they who advocate the system, pretend to call themselves federalists, in convention the distinction was quite the reverse; those who opposed the system, were there considered and styled the federal party, those who advocated it, the antifederal.


The Founders' Constitution
Volume 2, Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1, Document 8
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_4_1s8.html
The University of Chicago Press

Storing, Herbert J., ed. The Complete Anti-Federalist. 7 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.