Annapolis Convention (1786)

Annapolis Convention (1786)

The Annapolis Convention was a meeting in 1786 at Annapolis, Maryland, of 12 delegates from five states (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia) that unanimously called for a constitutional convention. The formal title of the meeting was a Meeting of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government. Long dissatisfied with the weak Articles of Confederation, Alexander Hamilton of New York played a major leadership role. He drafted its resolution for a constitutional convention, and in doing so brought his longtime desire to have a more powerful, more financially independent federal government one step closer to reality.

The defects that they were to remedy were those barriers that limited trade or commerce between the largely independent states under the Articles of Confederation.

The convention met from September 11 to September 14, 1786. The commissioners felt that there were not enough states represented to make any substantive agreement. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina had appointed commissioners who failed to arrive in Annapolis in time to attend the meeting, while Connecticut, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia had taken no action at all.

They produced a report which was sent to the Congress and to the states. The report asked support for a broader meeting to be held the next May in Philadelphia. It expressed the hope that more states would be represented and that their delegates or deputies would be authorized to examine areas broader than simply commercial trade.

The direct result of the report was the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, which produced the United States Constitution.