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branches, and that the House
resolve electoral college deadlocks. Mason played a key role in devising the procedure for overriding
presidential vetoes, and his refusal to sign the Constitution, coupled with his resounding insistence
that it not be ratified until a bill of rights was added, helped spur Federalists to pledge to submit a
bill of rights to the states in the first Congress.
    The second party consisted of nationalists, people who-without
ever avowing admiration for the monarchical form-wanted to push centralization as far as reasonably could be hoped. These people hoped
to establish a centralized government largely dominated by their own
states. Most prominent among these was Virginia's James Madison, long
Hamilton's coadjutor in the Federalist cause, whose work the Virginia
Plan chiefly was. In the wake of the Convention, Madison would be
greatly dismayed by the discrepancy between what he had wanted and
what the Convention had yielded. He repeatedly acted in positions of
high public trust over the next four decades to bring the federal regime
into consonance with his proposals-even to the extent of arguing that
the Constitution meant what the Convention had squarely decided that
it should not mean. We will return to the topic of Madison's peculiar role
in American constitutional history again and again.

    Finally, there was a cohort in the Convention of members insistent
on proposing a reinforcement of the central government while maintaining the primary place of the states in the American polity-a truly federal, rather than national, government. They would have their way in the
short run. In time, however, "constitutional law" would undo their victory almost completely.
    Early in the Convention, the committee of the whole house very narrowly agreed to create a national government with a national executive,
a national legislative, and a national judicial branch. It also agreed that
the national legislature ought to be empowered to legislate in all cases to
which the separate states might be incompetent and all areas in which
the harmony of the states might be interrupted by separate state legislation. In addition, it decided that the national legislature should have a
veto over state laws it considered contrary to the articles of union. At this
early stage in the convention, the committee of the whole also decided
that the national judiciary should have power to decide all cases affecting the "national peace and harmony."
    How do we know these things? We can extract them from the record of
deliberations provided by two of the delegates, Maryland's Luther Martin-who first provided the three-party classification of the delegates
given above-and New York's Robert Yates. In addition, we have the journal of the Convention. As the Philadelphia Convention early on decided to
create a national government with an overwhelmingly powerful national
legislature and a very strong national judiciary, and as by the end of the Convention it had produced a federal constitution without either of those features, we are on firm ground in concluding that the change was no accident.

    The Constitution as finally referred to Congress by the Convention featured a federal legislative body, or Congress, without either the sweeping
legislative authority or the veto over state laws earlier proposed by the
advocates of a national government (and
supported, through the summer, by the theoretical monarchists). We know that this
decision was a carefully considered one
because delegate James Madison of Virginia
repeatedly implored the other delegates to
restore the congressional veto of state laws,
only to see his arguments repeatedly
rejected.
    Rather than wiping the states off the map,
the Convention made their continued existence essential to the selection of members
of Congress. First, members of the House of
Representatives would be elected by voters eligible to vote for members
of the relevant state