In the Congress of the confederation, the master minds of James
Madison and Alexander Hamilton were constantly engaged through the
closing years of the Revolutionary War and those of peace which
immediately succeeded. That of John Jay was associated with them
shortly after the peace, in the capacity of secretary to the
Congress for foreign affairs. The incompetency of the articles of
confederation for the management of the affairs of the Union at home
and abroad was demonstrated to them by the painful and mortifying
experience of every day. Washington, though in retirement, was
brooding over the cruel injustice suffered by his associates in
arms, the warriors of the Revolution; over the prostration of the
public credit and the faith of the nation, in the neglect to provide
for the payment even of the interest upon the public debt; over the
disappointed hopes of the friends of freedom; in the language of the
address from Congress to the States of the eighteenth of April, 1783
--"the pride and boast of America, that the rights for which she
contended were the rights of human nature."

At his residence at Mount Vernon, in March 1785, the first idea was
started of a revisal of the articles of confederation, by an
organization, of means differing from that of a compact between the
State legislatures and their own delegates in Congress. A
convention of delegates from the State legislatures, independent of
the Congress itself, was the expedient which presented itself for
effecting the purpose, and an augmentation of the powers of Congress
for the regulation of commerce, as the object for which this
assembly was to be convened. In January 1786 the proposal was made
and adopted in the legislature of Virginia, and communicated to the
other State legislatures.