e success of this assembly of commissioners, which was only intended
to prepare a question much more important than that of commerce. The
measures were so well taken that at the end of September no more than
five states were represented at Annapolis, and the commissioners from
the northern states tarried several days at New York in order to retard
their arrival.

"The states which assembled, after having waited nearly three weeks,
separated under the pretext that they were not in sufficient numbers to
enter on business, and, to justify this dissolution, they addressed to
the different legislatures and to congress a report, the translation of
which I have the honor to enclose to you."*

* Quoted by Bancroft, "History of the Formation of the
Constitution," vol. ii, Appendix, pp. 399-400.

Among these "men denominated 'gentlemen'" to whom the French Charge
d'Affaires alludes, was James Madison of Virginia. He was one of the
younger men, unfitted by temperament and physique to be a soldier, who
yet had found his opportunity in the Revolution. Graduating in 1771
from Princeton, where tradition tells of the part he took in patriotic
demonstrations on the campus--characteristic of students then as now--he
had thrown himself heart and soul into the American cause. He was a
member of the convention to frame the first State Constitution for
Virginia in 1776, and from that time on, because of his ability, he was
an important figure in the political history of his State and of his
country. He was largely responsible for bringing about the conference
between Virginia and Maryland and for the subsequent steps resulting
in the trade convention at Annapolis. And yet Madison seldom took a
conspicuous part, preferring to remain in the background and to
allow others to appear as the leaders. When the Annapolis Convention
assembled, for example, he suffered Alexander Hamilton of New York to
play the leading role.

Hamilton was then approaching thirty years of age and was one of the
ablest men in the United States. Though his best work was done in
later years, when he proved himself to be perhaps the most brilliant
of American statesmen, with an extraordinary genius for administrative
organization, the part that he took in the affairs of this period was
important. He was small and slight in person but with an expressive
face, fair complexion, and cheeks of "almost feminine rosiness." The
usual aspect of his countenance was tho