in U.S. history, regional meeting at Annapolis, Md., in September 1786; it was an important rallying point in the movement toward a federal convention to revise the inadequate Articles of Confederation.

Growing out of an earlier meeting of representatives of Maryland and Virginia to discuss ways of improving navigation on the Potomac River, the convention of delegates from five states found that it could not deal effectively with national commercial problems without changes in the Articles. Realizing that they could not recommend the needed revisions, the delegates stretched their authority by issuing a new call to all the states for a meeting eight months later in Philadelphia, where the present federal Constitution was drafted.