Akhil Reed Amar is a professor at Yale Law School. He says Americans realized a strong central government could improve their national security system.

In 1786, representatives from Maryland and Virginia met to discuss opening land for new settlements along the Potomac River. The Potomac formed the border between those two states.

The representatives agreed that the issue of settling new land was too big for just two states to decide. Someone asked, Why not invite Delaware and Pennsylvania to help? Someone else said all the states should be invited. Then they could discuss all the problems that were giving the new nation so much trouble.

The idea was accepted. And a convention was set for Annapolis, Maryland.

The convention opened as planned. But it was not much of a meeting. Representatives came from only five states. The men who did meet at Annapolis, however, agreed that it was a beginning. They agreed, too, that a larger convention should be called. They appointed the representative from New York, Alexander Hamilton, to put the agreement in writing.

So Hamilton sent a message to the legislature of each state. He called for a convention in Philadelphia in May of the next year, 1787. The purpose of the convention, he said, would be to write a constitution for the United States.

The nation was new, but the idea of a constitution was not. Law professor Akhil Reed Amar explains that the earliest settlers had formed political agreements called compacts, charters or corporations. These agreements developed into state constitutions.