Aside from the commercially inspired Mount Vernon Compact of 1785, the first public acknowledgement of the enormous inability of Congress to govern the peace in the new United States was the calling of the Annapolis Convention for September 1786. William Grayson, writing to James Madison that May, sounded upon the grievances of an ineffective Congress, […]
The summer meeting of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was an event as momentous as the eight years it took for the colonies/states to achieve independence. The failure of the Articles of Confederation, and the dismal outcome (and attendance) of the Annapolis Convention in 1786, made it clear to all concerned that a […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews historian Jason Yonce about the Annapolis Convention of 1786, one of the most fascinating political meetings in the run-up to Constitutional Convention in 1787. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the American Revolution. Dispatches is a free podcast that puts a […]
Speaking at South Carolina’s ratification convention in 1788, Charles Pinckney derided the Articles of Confederation as a “miserable, feeble mockery of government.” Pinckney was a young but significant figure at the Constitutional Convention along with his cousin Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. While coastal South Carolinians, rooted in Charleston, were likely to prevail in support of the […]
