Annapolis Convention (1786) - Definition and Overview

The Annapolis Convention was a meeting at Annapolis, Maryland of 12 delegates from five states (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia) that called for a Constitutional Convention. The formal title of the meeting was a Meeting of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government. 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 a sufficient states represented to make any substantive agreement. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina had appointed commissioners who failed to get to the meeting in time to attend it, while Connecticut, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia had taken no action at all.

They produced a report which was sent to the Continental Congress and to the states. The report asked support for a broader meeting to be held 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 Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Delegates

The states represented, and their delegates were:

• New York: Egbert Benson and Alexander Hamilton
• New Jersey: Abraham Clark, William Houston, and James Schureman
• Pennsylvania: Tench Coxe
• Delaware: George Read, John Dickinson, and Richard Bassett
• Virginia: Edmund Randolph, James Madison, Jr., and Saint George Tucker

External link

• Text of the report at Yale Law School web site (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/annapoli.htm)