The citizens of Virginia and Maryland, directly interested in the navigation of the rivers Potomac and Pocomoke, and of the Bay of Chesapeake, had long been embarrassed by the conflicting rights and regulations of their respective States; and, in the spring of 1785, an effort at accommodation was made, by the appointment of commissioners on the part of each State to form a compact between them for the regulation of the trade upon those waters. These commissioners assembled at Alexandria in March, and while there made a visit at Mount Vernon, where a further scheme was concerted for the establishment of harmonious commercial regulations between the two States.[361] This plan contemplated the appointment of other commissioners, having power to make arrangements, with the assent of Congress, for maintaining a naval force in the Chesapeake, and also for establishing a tariff of duties on imports, to be enacted by the legislatures of both the States. A report, embracing this recommendation, was accordingly made by the Alexandria commissioners to their respective governments. In the legislature of Virginia this report was received while the proposition for granting temporary commercial powers to Congress was under consideration; and it was immediately followed by a resolution directing that part of the plan which respected duties on imports to be communicated to all the States, with an invitation to send deputies to the meeting. In a few days afterwards, the celebrated resolution of Virginia, which led the way to the Convention at Annapolis, was adopted by the legislature, directing the appointment of commissioners to meet with the deputies of all the other States who might be appointed for the same purpose, to consider the whole subject of the commerce of the United States.[362] The circular letter which transmitted this resolution to the several States proposed that Annapolis in the State of Maryland should be the place, and that the following September should be the time of meeting.