Provision was made for the creation, by the Congress, of courts having a
certain specified jurisdiction in admiralty and maritime cases, and for
the settlement of controversies between two or more States in a mode
specifically prescribed.
The Government thus constituted was found inadequate for some necessary
purposes, and it became requisite to reorganize it. The first idea of
such reorganization arose from the necessity of regulating the
commercial intercourse of the States with one another and with foreign
countries, and also of making some provision for payment of the debt
contracted during the war for independence. These exigencies led to a
proposition for a meeting of commissioners from the various States to
consider the subject. Such a meeting was held at Annapolis in September,
1786; but, as only five States (New York, New Jersey, Delaware,
Pennsylvania, and Virginia) were represented, the Commissioners declined
to take any action further than to recommend another Convention, with a
wider scope for consideration. As they expressed it, it was their
"unanimous conviction that it may essentially tend to advance the
interests of the Union, if the States, by whom they have been
respectively delegated, would themselves concur, and use their endeavors
to procure the concurrence of the other States, in the appointment of
commissioners, to meet at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next,
to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise
such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the
Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the
Union, and to report such an act for that purpose to the United States
in Congress assembled, as, when agreed to by them, and afterward
confirmed by the Legislatures of every State, will effectually provide
for the same.
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