1. the states or the people  The Tenth Amendment says that all powers not specifically given to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people. The Bill of Rights imposed limits on the federal government. It did not extend freedom of speech, religion, etc. to the states. Which powers go to the states and which to the people is still controversial, although individual rights were strengthened at the expense of states' rights by the 14th Amendment.
 
 
 

2. persons Slavery was an embarrassment to many of those who wrote the U. S. Constitution, some of whom were abolitionists. Thus the words "slave," "slavery" etc. never appear in the Constitution until the 13th Amendment abolished slavery after the Civil War. Slavery was dealt with in the Constitution as a special case of indentured servitude, the slave trade as a special case of immigration, etc. The humanity of African-Americans was never in doubt to the revolutionaries who wrote the Constitution, even those who supported the institution of slavery, and the Constitution has always been color-blind.
 
 
 

3. carry out (execute) the laws The American system of separation of powers involves strict separation of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, as well as between federal and state levels of government. Thus, at the federal level, Congress has the power to make laws, but the president is responsible for enforcing the laws. Not long ago the Supreme Court declared a budget-balancing act unconstitutional because it gave the Congressional Budget Office the power to enforce the law. The other powers mentioned as alternative choices are all explicitly granted to Congress in the Constitution.
 
 
 

4. incorporate companies.  The Constitution nowhere gives the federal government the power to incorporate companies, except in special cases, such as Congress's power to administer the territories. Of course, in cases where the federal government does have the power to make laws, federal law is supreme, but as mentioned above, the federal government's power to make laws is limited to those fields where it has expressly been given the power in the Constitution. This is why companies are incorporated in particular states.  This is also why so many amendments to the constitution have words such as "The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

5. the President  The president of the United States is not allowed to make laws, but is supposed to enforce the laws passed by the Congress. Notice how the Supreme Court threw out the line-item veto for being a form of legislation by the president.  The president can return a law to Congress with his objections, but he cannot amend the laws as passed by Congress.  The president can make treaties, but only if two-thirds of the Senate approves them. This separation of the right to make laws and the right to enforce them extends even to the war-making powers, by which Congress is given the power to declare war, and the president is Commander-in-chief of the military.
 
 
 

6. Women in states that allowed them to vote. Voting by women was a states' right.  When the Constitution was originally written, all voting qualifications were states' rights. Eight states allowed Catholics to vote. Four allowed Jews to vote. Five, including North Carolina, allowed free blacks to vote. One (New Jersey) allowed women to vote, although that right was later revoked. As time has gone by, various amendments have guaranteed blacks, women and most recently 18-year-olds the right to vote. Voting qualifications are otherwise still largely a matter of states' rights.
 
 
 

7. Pay it. According to the Constitution you can't even question the national debt. The 14th Amendment is quite explicit about this: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." This was originally passed to guarantee Union Civil War veterans their bonuses. Southern representatives in Congress had tried to repudiate the federal debt and take up the Confederate debt.  This provision is still in force, and talk of repudiating the federal debt is clearly unconstitutional.
 
 
 

8. a republican form of government What this means is a matter of  interpretation, as our understanding of republicanism has changed over time. When the Constitution was written it was clear that all states had to have representative governments without kings, princes or other titles of nobility. These eighteenth century revolutionaries had  the Roman republican model very much in mind, especially as regards representative government and the rejection of kingship. They did not think in modern terms of universal suffrage. The Roman Republic had been a slave society, and thus many of the American revolutionaries saw no contradiction between slavery and their republican revolutionary ideals.
 
 
 

9. It doesn't say anything about political parties at all. The framers of the United States Constitution were making an experiment. Political parties in the modern sense would have been difficult for them to have imagined.  The statesmen who wrote the Constitution considered "factions" to be bad for republican government, but sought to mitigate the effects of factions rather than to abolish them outright. When formal political parties appeared in the election of 1800, the Twelfth Amendment had to be passed to take them into account, but still without mentioning them.  The U.S. Constitution does weaken political parties more than the parliamentary constitutions of most other democracies, but is there any force on earth which can prevent politicians from forming political parties?

In practical terms political parties in the United States are recognized and organized primarily by state governments (another example of states' rights at work.)  Ballots in each state list different minor parties, more in some states and fewer in others. Even the major parties, Democratic and Republican, differ from one state to the next.
 
 
 

10. the Constitution doesn't say anything about the economic system. The Constitution is intended to set limits on government, yet be flexible about what the people can do. Thus some of the powers given to the federal government (e.g. taxing and spending) are vague. The Fourth Amendment does guarantee "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" and the Fifth Amendment says that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Other than that, the relation of government to the economy is left vague, except that the federal government has the power to regulate interstate commerce. State governments (not the federal government) have the power to incorporate companies, just as they have the power to control their own marriage laws. Under the Constitution the relation of the federal government to the economy has grown as the extent of interstate commerce has grown.