The final change in the views of Congress in regard to a convention was produced by the action of the legislature of New York. In that body, as we have seen, the impost system had been rejected, in the session of 1786, and the Governor of the State had even refused to reassemble the legislature for the reconsideration of this subject. A new session commenced in January, 1787, in the city of New York, where Congress was also sitting. A crisis now occurred, in which the influence of Hamilton was exerted in the same manner that it had been in the former session, and with a similar result. On that occasion he had followed up the rejection of the impost system with a resolve for the appointment of commissioners to attend the meeting at Annapolis. It was now his purpose, in case the impost system should be again rejected, to obtain the sanction of Congress to the recommendation of a convention, made by the Annapolis commissioners. This, he was aware, could be effected only by inducing the legislature of New York to instruct the delegates of their State in Congress to move and vote for that decisive measure. The majority of the members of Congress were indisposed to adopt the plan of a convention; and although they might be brought to recommend it at the instance of a State, they were not inclined to do so spontaneously.[378] The crisis required, therefore, all the address of Hamilton and of the friends of the Union, to bring the influence of one of these bodies to bear upon the other. The reiterated recommendation by Congress of the impost system, now addressed solely to the State of New York, who remained alone in her refusal, necessarily occupied the earliest attention of the new legislature.[379] A warm discussion upon a bill introduced for the purpose of effecting the grant as Congress had asked for it, ended, on the 15th of February, in its defeat. The subject of a general convention of the States, according to the plan of the Annapolis commissioners, was then before Congress, on the report of a grand committee;[380] and Congress were hesitating upon its expediency. At this critical juncture, Hamilton carried a resolution in the legislature of New York, instructing the delegates of that State in Congress to move for an act recommending the States to send delegates to a convention for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, which, four days afterwards, was laid before Congress.[381] Virginia and North Carolina had already chosen delegates to the Convention, in compliance with the recommendation from Annapolis; and Massachusetts was about to make such an appointment, under the influence of her patriotic Bowdoin. In this posture of affairs, although the proposition of the New York delegation failed to be adopted,[382] the fact that she had thus solicited the action of Congress was of decisive influence, when the members from Massachusetts followed it immediately by a resolve more acceptable to a majority of the assembly.[383]