a separate executive and an attempt to establish a limited national judicial department, all real power was vested in the Congress. Congress gathered to itself all the active functions of government, and yet even it could take no definite action unless the delegates from at least nine of the States consented, and none of its acts could be enforced except through the good will and the active coöperation of the separate States. In these two circumstances and in one other, namely: that Congress had no power to regulate interstate commerce, lay the serious, the fatal weakness of the Articles of Confederation. Nor did there seem to be any way of remedying conditions, for no amendment could be made to the Articles unless every State consented. Three times the attempt was made, but each time it failed, and the experiment of a union among the States seemed doomed to failure. Then, in 1786, upon the invitation of Virginia, delegates from five of the States met at Annapolis to consider the subject of interstate trade without consulting the members of Congress. Instead of taking any action, however, this convention issued an address to the States inviting them to send delegates to a convention to meet in Philadelphia May, 1787, “to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” Though many States still hesitated, as a result of this address, delegates from all the States except Rhode Island met at the appointed time in what came to be known as the Constitutional Convention. Having led his pupils thus far in the study of the history of the Constitution, the teacher is now prepared to discuss with them the second stage of its story. First he will need to insist, and that unrelentingly, that they become acquainted with the names and the personality of at least the most prominent members of the Convention: Washington and Madison and Randolph, from Virginia; Franklin and Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, from Pennsylvania; Hamilton and Lansing, from New York; Gerry and King, from Massachusetts; Ellsworth and Sherman, from Connecticut; the two Pinckneys, from South Carolina; and Patterson, from New Jersey. The personality of these men, their plans and preparations, are all of profound importance; each contributed something, positive or negative, to the new instrument of government.