The Constitutional Convention and Centralization: Are We National or Federal

One of the outstanding achievements of the Constitutional Convention was the invention of federalism in its modern sense.  Prior to the Constitutional Convention , governments were either what political scientists today would call "unitary" (or people at the time called "national") or "confederated" (or what people at the time called "federal.")  In a unitary system, the central government is clearly supreme and local governments are mere administrative divisions.  In a confederated system, the central government is the creation of its members, joined in a common defense.  The central government has no direct jurisdiction over individuals, only over its member states.

The United States under the Articles of Confederation was a confederated government.  The central government consisted of the Continental Congress, which could legislate for the whole, but left all enforcement to the states.  Each state sent two to seven delegates to Congress, but delegation could cast only one vote, on behalf of the state.  Delegates were elected by state legislatures for one-year terms and bound by instructions by the states they represented, more like ambassadors than a true legislature.  The central government financed itself by determining how much money it needed, and assigning each state a proportionate quota of the total.  Each state was allowed to raise the money as it wished; the central government had no power to collect taxes.  The same rule applied to raising armies -- each state was required to raise troops in proportion to its population, but the central government had no power to raise forces itself.  Not too surprisingly, states regularly failed to proved their full quotas of money or soldiers.  Furthermore, although legislation passed by the Continental Congress was theoretically binding, it had no enforcement powers, so states could regularly defy its will.  The central government had full authority over foreign affairs, and sole authority to negotiate treaties, including trade treaties.  However, with no power to regulate foreign trade, states regularly defied the terms of such treaties.

It was generally agreed that this was an unsatisfactory arrangement and that a stronger central government was needed.  But what form would it take?