convened. In January, 1785, the proposal was made and
adopted in the Legislature of Virginia, and communicated to
the other State Legislatures.

The Convention was held at Annapolis, in September of that
year. It was attended by delegates from only five of the central
States, who, on comparing their restricted powers with the
glaring and universally acknowledged defects of the
Confederation, reported only a recommendation for the
assemblage of another convention of delegates to meet at
Philadelphia, in May, 1787, from all the States, and with
enlarged powers.

The Constitution of the United States was the work of this
Convention. But in its construction the Convention
immediately perceived that they must retrace their steps, and
fall back from a league of friendship between sovereign States
to the constituent sovereignty of the people; from power to
right--from the irresponsible despotism of State sovereignty to
the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. In
that instrument, the right to institute and to alter governments
among men was ascribed exclusively to the people--the ends of
government were declared to be to secure the natural rights of
man; and that when the government degenerates from the
promotion to the destruction of that end, the right and the duty
accrues to the people to dissolve this degenerate government
and to institute another. The signers of the Declaration further
averred, that the one people of the United Colonies were then
precisely in that situation--with a government degenerated into
tyranny, and called upon by the laws of nature and of nature's