He was present at the calls of Patrick Henry: "You have a bill of rights to defend you against the state government, which is bereaved of all power, and yet you have none against Congress, though in full and exclusive possession of all power! You arm yourselves against the weak and defenceless, and expose yourselves naked to the armed and powerful. Is not this a conduct of unexampled absurdity? What barriers have you to oppose to this most strong, energetic government? To that government you have nothing to oppose. All your defence is given up. This is a real, actual defect. It must strike the mind of every gentleman."...
and of George Mason: " The government of Virginia, he remarked, was drawn from the people; yet there were certain great and important rights, which the people, by their bill of rights, declared to be paramount to the power of the legislature. He asked, Why should it not be so in this Constitution? Was it because we were more substantially represented in it than in the state government? If, in the state government, where the people were substantially and fully represented, it was necessary that the great rights of human nature should {445} be secure from the encroachments of the legislature, he asked if it was not more necessary in this government, where they were but inadequately represented? He declared that artful sophistry and evasions could not satisfy him. He could see no clear distinction between rights relinquished by a positive grant, and lost by implication. Unless there were a bill of rights, implication might swallow up all our rights. " at the Virginia Constitutional Ratification Convention for a Bill of Rights. He recognized, like Madison, that the Constitution would never have been ratified unless the calls of these and other anti-federalists to limit the powers of the new central government were answered by a Bill of Rights.
The Constitution is an historical fact. The limitations imposed on the federal government by the likes of Henry and Mason were not removed by living constitutionalists, but by the Fourteenth Amendment.
(The selective "incorporation" of the Fourteenth Amendment is an arbitrary mess. If incorporation were done logically the Second would, of course, wholly apply to the states now. For better or worse.)
Do you think that a correct reading of the Constitution means that no level of government may infringe the RKBA?
It was clearly the intent of the Congress to incorporate the first 8 amendments when passing the 14th Amendment - see the Congressional Record quotes above. The courts have failed to follow this intent and are in error when they do so. Futher, others of the founding generation had different opinions than the ones you quote. In particular see Jefferson "At the height of the debate, in December 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then serving as ambassador to France, wrote a letter to his friend James Madison, one of the chief authors of the new constitution. 'A bill of rights,' Jefferson wrote, 'is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.'" I would add that the need for incorporation is no more clearly demonstrated than in the case of the 2nd Amendment. It was denied to the newly freed slaves in the reconstruction period for the express purpose of suppressing their political power - tyranny of the majority.
Are state constitutions written before, or after a state is admitted into the Union by Congress?
Notice Marshall's weasel wording qualifier, -"these amemdments"-. --- The BOR's amendments themselves need no such 'indicators', as the supremacy clause make clear that the States are bound to honor ALL of the constitution as the Law of the Land.
Marshall was trying to hold the union together with his erroneous 1833 Barron decision. His decision gave credence to the states rightists efforts to ignore our BOR's protections, necessitating the passage of the 14th amendment to end the controversy.
-- Needless to say, those who value State power over individual rights are still among us, subverting our most basic principle of personal liberty.
Why they are so obsessed is a true mystery. Can you explain it?
But it is universally understood, it is a part of the history of the day, that the great revolution which established the Constitution of the United States was not effected without immense opposition.
Serious fears were extensively entertained that those powers which the patriot statesmen who then watched over the interests of our country deemed essential to union, and to the attainment of those invaluable objects for which union was sought, might be exercised in a manner dangerous to liberty.
In almost every convention by which the Constitution was adopted, amendments to guard against the abuse of power were recommended.
These amendments demanded security against the apprehended encroachments of the General Government -- not against those of the local governments.
In compliance with a sentiment thus generally expressed, to quiet fears thus extensively entertained, amendments were proposed by the required majority in Congress and adopted by the States.
These amendments contain no expression indicating an intention to apply them to the State governments. This court cannot so apply them. "