The states righters of Marshall’s era, much like the antifederalists of the previous era, believed that the Constitution served as a generic limit on federal power while the Tenth Amendment served as a general grant of, near, limitless discretionary power for the states. The antifederalists, chiefly those who supported the ‘league’ concept of the Articles of Confederation, feared a strong central government that wielded discretion and its accompanying power. In the same way the state righters desired state independence and discretion, not to be infringed upon by a unified Federal government. This mindset lead to, on multiple occasions, conflicts in which states challenged Federal supremacy. These conflicts manifested themselves in Supreme …show more content…
Marshall addresses this issue when he argues, “It is the government of all; its powers are delegated by all; it represents all, and acts for all.” Marshall makes it clear that the Union, governed by the Federal government, which was established by the People, has dominion over all the enumerated states. That the Federal Constitution serves to, “necessarily bind its component parts.” According to Marshall, the Union is no longer a loosely tied league of independent states, it is now a Country of unified, but uniquely separate, entities; it is a Federalist republic. In Gibbons, Marshall continues this same logic as he asserts the supremacy of the Federal over the states; Marshall writes, “the acts of congress… are supreme; and the law of the state… must yield to it,” Though the states righters believed the states to win out in conflicts of state and federal shared powers, Marshall, by means of the Constitution, makes it clear that the unified government over the Union is supreme as a body with more widespread will granted by the unified people rather than by the individual state