3726

JOINT RESOLUTIONS

Transportation, United States Department of Transportation, 400
Seventh Street, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20590.

Signed May 21, 1985.

No. 14

(Senate Joint Resolution No. 43)

A Senate Joint Resolution concerning

The Mount Vernon Conference of 1785

FOR the purpose of commemorating the bicentennial of the Mount
Vernon Conference and the resulting Compact of 1785.

WHEREAS, The year 1989 marks the bicentennial of the
adoption of the United States Constitution, which established a
government of, by, and for the people, under which the State of
Maryland and the Nation at large has grown and prospered; and

WHEREAS, The call for a new constitution for the United
States began as an effort to better regulate the commerce of the
United States; and

WHEREAS, Maryland and Virginia were among the first states'
to settle jurisdictional disputes arising from conflicts over
trade, navigation, and fishing; and

WHEREAS, At the request of the Virginia General Assembly,
the Maryland General Assembly in January, 1785, appointed Thomas
Johnson, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, Thomas Stone, and Samuel
Chase to meet with representatives from Virginia to discuss and
resolve mutual problems of jurisdiction over navigation and
fishing on the Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac River, and the
Pocomoke River; and

WHEREAS, This meeting convened at Mount Vernon at the
invitation of George Washington on March 28, 1785, and resulted
in the Mount Vernon Compact, provisions of which with regard to
fishing on the Potomac are still in effect today; and

WHEREAS, The bipartisan success of    the Mount Vernon

Conference led to the call for a meeting  of all the states to

assemble in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1786,     to discuss matters
relating to trade; and

WHEREAS, The Annapolis Convention of September 11-14, 1786,
concluded that the whole framework of the national government
required immediate attention and issued a call for the
Philadelphia Convention that, in 1787, adopted the Constitution
of the United States; now, therefore, be it