Who Ratified the Constitution? The States or the People of the United States?

 In McCulloch, the state of Maryland argued that "the powers of the general government...are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states who alone possess supreme dominion." (p. 123) What was this argument all about? If the states delegate a power to the national government and declare that the exercise of such powers are the supreme law of the land, may any single state effectively nullify a supreme national law by declaring the law to be of no force or effect within such nullifying state? 

Marshall stated that the "government of the Union...is emphatically a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them." (p. 124). Do you agree that the Constitution was ratified by a a national plebiscite of the people as a whole. Or was it ratified by the people of each state acting as the supreme authority of their respective state?

What does the Constitution itself say about who ratified the Constitution? The states? The people in each state? The people as a nation?

Consider Article VII of the Constitution, a provision we have already discussed in some detail:

"The ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the states so ratifying the same."

As Dean Chemerinsky notes, "The Constitution was not approved by a national plebiscite; it was ratified by the states...the language of Article VII...clearly indicates that the states themselves had to ratify the Constitution, not the people." But, of course, the Preamble of the Constitution might be read os supporting Marshall's view:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

But so what? Once the states have agreed (by ratification) to create a national government under a Supremacy Clause, why should we think they are free to ignore the Supremacy Clause whenever they wish, or to secede from the union if they so desire? As the casebook says on page 130, as a result of the Civil War and the Union's victory, "the right of secession was rejected on the battlefield."