Without bothering to counter using any of a number of quotes from others, one simply has to point out that the States ratified the Constitution.
Why would such irrelevant entities have to go to the trouble of forming state conventions for the ratification of a document to create them as subdivisions? Does the baby create the mother?
Like all Hamiltonian groupies, you have it backwards. The States predated the Constitution; they collectively came together with representatives to re-negotiate the terms of their union ("...in order to form a more perfect...") and they did not negotiate away their own state sovereignty, no matter what Mr. Hamilton or his operator Mr. Marshall attempted to do with their own self serving chicanery.
Federal supremacy only applies to those areas granted to it. Federal laws which usurp those boundaries are null and void, usurpations, as even your hero Hamilton had to admit.
1. It was formed, not by the governments of the component states, as the federal government for which it was substituted was formed. Nor was it formed by a majority of the people of the United States, as a single community, in the manner of a consolidated government.That's why it had to be state conventions. They needed to derive from the same authority that made the state constitutions, so that they could legitimately supercede and nullify state constitutions at will. I'll give Madison credit for being fair. His project was a stinker, but he did it on the up and up.It was formed by the states, that is, by the people in each of the states, acting in their highest sovereign capacity; and formed consequently by the same authority which formed the state constitutions.
As for why they kept states around at all, the main reason was political expedience. Again, from Madison:
Conceiving that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcileable with their aggregate sovereignty, and that a consolidation of the whole into one simple republic would be as inexpedient as it is unattainable, I have sought for middle ground, which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and not exclude the local authorities wherever they can be subordinately useful.--letter to G Washington
As for the Hamilton groupie nonsense, it just shows what a drooling moron you are. I have not expressed any special admiration towards Hamilton. I see him as a villian. But facts are what they are. Unlike you, I can recognize facts without throwing little baby tantrums.
Of course they did.