A Failed Nation - A Convention of the States

The convention that produced the Constitution was born, improbably, out of a fishing dispute and a failure. This is the story of the strange chain of events that led to Philadelphia. It begins in 1785 at Mount Vernon, where commissioners from Virginia and Maryland settle a quarrel over the Potomac — and prove that states can cooperate outside a paralyzed Congress. It runs through Annapolis in September of 1786, where a grand convention on interstate trade collapses when only five states bothe...