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 payments 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, 1788--"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
the 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