Page "President of the United States" Paragraph 4

In 1783, the Treaty of Paris secured independence for the former colonies.

With peace at hand, the states each turned toward their own internal affairs.

By 1786, Americans found their continental borders besieged and weak, their respective economies in crises as neighboring states agitated trade rivalries with one another, witnessed their hard currency pouring into foreign markets to pay for imports, their Mediterranean commerce preyed upon by North African pirates, and their foreign-financed Revolutionary War debts unpaid and accruing interest.

Civil and political unrest loomed.

Aiming toward a first step of resolving interstate commercial antagonisms, Virginia called for a trade conference in Annapolis, Maryland, set for September 1786.

When the convention failed for lack of attendance due to suspicions among most of the other states, the Annapolis delegates called for a convention to offer revisions to the Articles, to be held the next spring in Philadelphia.

Prospects for the next convention appeared bleak until James Madison and Edmund Randolph succeeded in securing George Washington's attendance as a delegate to Philadelphia.