ch we
now live, and now we are unsheathing our swords to overturn them.
The thing is so unaccountable that I hardly know how to realize it
or to persuade myself that I am not under an illusion of a dream."

It was, however, the darkest hour before the dawn, and again it was
Washington who became his country's saviour. In 1785, some commissioners
from the States of Virginia and Maryland visited Mount Vernon to pay
their respects to the well-loved commander. After conferring with him
upon the chaos of the times, they decided to issue a call for a general
conference of the representatives of the States to be held on September
11, 1786, at Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss how far the States
themselves could agree on common regulations of commerce. At the
appointed time the delegates assembled from Virginia, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, New York and New Jersey, and finding themselves too few in
number to achieve the great objective, the convention contented itself
by issuing another call, drafted by Alexander Hamilton, then under
thirty years of age, to all the States to send delegates to a convention
to be held in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May, 1787, "to take
into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such
further provisions as should appear to them necessary to render the
Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the
Union."

The dying Congress tardily approved of this suggestion, but finally, on
January 21, 1787, grudgingly adopted a resolution that--

"It is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a convention
of delegates, who shall have been appointed by the several States,
be held at Philadelphia _for the sole and express purpose of
revising the Articles of Confederation_ and reporting to Congress
and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein
as shall, _when agreed to in Congress_ and conformed to by the
States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigency of
the government and the preservation of the union."

It will be noted by the italicized portions of the resolution that this
impotent body thus vainly attempted to cling to the shadow of its
vanished authority by stating that the proposed constitutional
convention should merely revise the worthless Articles of Confederation
and that such amendments should not have validity until adopted by
Congress as well as by the peopl