It took several decades to turn thirteen separate colonies into the United States of America. The process began as early as the French and Indian War and led colonists from various regions to assert American rights to self-government through Committees of Correspondence and other informal, extralegal means. The practical result of these first steps was the creation of the Continental Congress, an assembly of delegates sent to Philadelphia by the provisional governments of the thirteen colonies. It was this "states in congress assembled" that proclaimed Independence on July 4,1776. During the Revolutionary War the Continental Congress assumed the functions of a national government, financing the Continental Army and directing the war effort. It sought allies for the Patriot cause and in the end its representatives signed the Treaty of Paris in which Britain recognized the United States. This event, however, only ended the combat�the task of producing a unified nation remained.

Congress tried to establish a basic governmental framework with the Articles of Confederation, ratified by the states in 1781. But the central government remained little more than a loose wartime alliance of independent states, and Congress, under the Articles, experienced serious difficulty in restoring a war-torn economy, regulating foreign trade, and protecting and developing the frontier between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. Congress did accept the notion that security was a national responsibility, and in June 1784 it authorized, on a temporary basis, a small peacetime Regular Army to occupy frontier forts. Competing state territorial claims, however, blocked plans for extending national government to the region.

George Washington, who emerged as a leading nationalist, was particularly concerned with the future of the west. He understood the region's vast potential and urged the development of rivers and roads as the means of keeping the frontier settlers tied to the union. In 1784 his colleague, James Madison, took a positive step toward realizing the general's goal by setting up a meeting at Annapolis in December between Maryland and Virginia (represented by Washington) to discuss the development of the Potomac River as a route to the west. There the states formed a corporation, the Patowmack Company, to improve the waterway and settled disputes over the upper reaches of the river.

Madison succeeded in arranging another conference between the two states in March 1785 at Alexandria, Virginia. Washington encouraged the commissioners, hosting some of the sessions at his plantation, and the "Mount Vernon Compact," signed on 28 March, settled the outstanding issues regarding the use of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Before departing, the commissioners recommended that yet another meeting with an expanded agenda be called, this time to include representatives from other nearby states. In January 1786, Virginia invited all the states to a special meeting at Annapolis in September to discuss commercial issues.

Madison, who had been a key figure in Virginia's initiative, arrived in Annapolis on 4 September and took up lodging at George Mann's Tavern, which became the site of the Annapolis Convention. He was soon joined by eleven other elected representatives from five states. Their informal discussions preceded the opening session on 11 September, when Delaware's John Dickinson, the elder statesman of the group and author of the Articles of Confederation, was chosen chairman. The delegates agreed that the absence of so many states and the differing instructions given to the delegates would prevent the meeting from accomplishing its stated purpose. But the strong nationalism of the dozen men, seven of whom had served under arms during the Revolution, led them to decide to use the opportunity to express their views in a report to the individual state legislatures and Congress.

Virtually everyone agreed that the question of trade regulation could not be divorced from larger political issues, an area that the delegates had no authority to discuss. One delegate, apparently Abraham Clark of New Jersey, therefore suggested that the report recommend another meeting explicitly empowered to frame measures to strengthen the Articles. When the others agreed, Alexander Hamilton prepared a draft with the assistance of Madison and Edmund Jennings Randolph. The full convention then polished the text before adjourning on the afternoon of the 14th. Each delegation carried a copy of the report back to its own legislature, while Dickinson delivered a copy to Congress. On 21 February that body endorsed the call for a convention to meet in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May of 1787�the convention that would write the Constitution.

On 19 September 1786 the Maryland Journal printed the first public notice about the Annapolis Convention. Its author commented, "Should this Address have its Effect, we may hope to see the Federal Union of these States established upon Principles, which will secure the

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CONVENTION DELEGATES

*Signer of the Constitution
**Member of the Constitutional Convention who did not sign

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Dignity, Harmony and Felicity of these confederated Republics; and not only rescue them from their present Difficulties, but from that insolent Hauteur and contemptuous Neglect, which they have experienced as a Nation."

Like the delegates at Annapolis, a majority of the men who would sign the Constitution had seen active military service during the Revolutionary War. Undoubtedly this experience had taught them much about the dangers of a weak central government and had hoped shape their ideas of a national union that would take precedence over the competing demands of states and sections. The foresight of these soldier-statesmen of the Constitution would more than answer the hopes raised for that long-ago Maryland journalist by the Annapolis Convention.

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