The latter mode was not contemplated by Congress when they acted upon the recommendation of the Annapolis commissioners. Accustomed to no other idea of a union than that formed by the States in their corporate capacities as distinct and sovereign communities; belonging to a body constituted by the States, and therefore officially related rather to the governments than to the people of the States; and entertaining a becoming and salutary fear of departing from a constitution which they had been appointed to administer,--the members of the Congress of 1786-87 were not likely to go beyond the Annapolis recommendation, which in fact proposed that the new system should be confirmed by the legislatures of the States. But the course of events tended to a different result,--to an actual, although a peaceable revolution, by the quiet substitution of a new government in place of the old one, and resting upon an entirely different basis. While Congress were debating the objections to a convention, the necessity for action became every day more stringent. The insurrection in Massachusetts, which had followed the meeting of the commissioners at Annapolis and had reached a dangerous crisis when their report was before Congress, had alarmed the people of the older States by the dangers of an anarchy with which the existing national government would be obviously unable to cope. The peril of losing the navigation of the Mississippi, and with it the Western settlements, through the inefficiency of Congress, was also at that moment impending; while, at the same time, the commerce of the country was nearly annihilated by a course of policy pursued by England, which Congress was utterly unable to encounter. Under these dangers and embarrassments, a state of public opinion was rapidly developed, in the winter of 1787, which drove Congress to action. The objections to the proposal before them yielded gradually to the stern requirements of necessity, and a convention was at last accepted, not merely as the best, but as the only practicable, mode of reaching the first great object by which an almost despairing country might be reassured of its future welfare.