Articles of Confederation
Background and Purpose
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were the first constitution of the United States. The Second Continental Congress started drafting them in 1776, with John Dickinson writing the main draft, and adopted them on November 15, 1777. Every state had to approve them, and Maryland held out until the states with western land claims (especially Virginia) agreed to hand those lands over to the national government. The Articles finally took effect on March 1, 1781, and stayed in force until the Constitution replaced them in 1789. They weren't a total failure: the Confederation Congress negotiated the Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the Revolutionary War, and passed the Northwest Ordinance (1787), which set up the process for turning western territories into new states.
The core idea is in Article II: "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence," along with every power not "expressly delegated" to Congress. Article III calls the union "a firm league of friendship" among the states. This is what makes it a confederation: the states stay sovereign, and the national government gets its power from the states and acts on the states, not directly on the people. The weakness was deliberate. Americans had just fought a war against a distant, powerful government that ignored their rights, so they built a central government too weak to threaten anyone.
Structure of the Government
- One-House Congress: the only national institution was a unicameral Congress. Each state sent two to seven delegates, chosen every year by its legislature and recallable at any time, but "each State shall have one vote" no matter its size (Article V).
- No Executive Branch: there was no president to enforce laws. Congress could pick one of its own members "to preside" for no more than one year in any three, and a "Committee of the States" handled business while Congress was out of session (Articles IX and X).
- No National Court System: there were no federal courts to interpret national law or settle disputes under it. Congress could set up courts only for crimes at sea and for appeals in cases about ships captured in war, and it settled boundary fights between states by forming a panel of judges case by case (Article IX).
- Supermajorities for Everything Important: major decisions (war, treaties, coining or borrowing money, spending, and raising an army) needed nine of the thirteen states (Article IX). Changing the Articles required approval from Congress and "the legislatures of every State" (Article XIII), so a single state could block any reform.
Key Weaknesses
- No Power to Tax: Congress's expenses came from a common treasury the states were supposed to fill, but the taxes were laid and collected by "the legislatures of the several States" (Article VIII). Congress could only send requests, called requisitions, and states often paid only part of what was asked or nothing at all, so Congress couldn't pay its war debts. The Constitution fixed this by giving Congress the power "To lay and collect Taxes" (Article I, Section 8).
- No Power to Regulate Interstate Commerce: each state made its own trade rules and could tax goods coming in from other states, which led to trade disputes between states and made a national economy almost impossible. The Constitution's Commerce Clause gave Congress the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States" (Article I, Section 8).
- No Exclusive Power to Coin Money: Congress could coin money, but so could the states, and states also printed their own paper money. With so many currencies floating around, trade got harder and paper money quickly lost value. The Constitution gave Congress the power "To coin Money" and banned states from coining money or issuing paper money (Article I, Sections 8 and 10).
- No Centralized Military: Congress couldn't raise an army on its own. It could only ask each state for a quota of troops "in proportion to the number of white inhabitants" (Article IX) and hope the states sent them. The Constitution let Congress "raise and support Armies" and call out the militia to "suppress Insurrections" (Article I, Section 8), and made the president commander in chief (Article II).
Shays' Rebellion and the Road to Philadelphia
In 1786 and early 1787, Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran, led armed farmers in western Massachusetts who were buried in debt and high state taxes. They shut down courts to stop farm foreclosures, and in January 1787 they tried to seize the federal arsenal at Springfield. Congress had no army and no money to respond, so Massachusetts put down the rebellion with a militia paid for largely by private merchants. For leaders like George Washington and James Madison, the rebellion was proof that the Articles were failing.
Around the same time, delegates from five states met at the Annapolis Convention (September 1786) to discuss trade problems and called for a broader meeting. In February 1787, Congress endorsed a convention in Philadelphia, set for that May, "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation." Instead of revising them, the delegates wrote an entirely new Constitution.
Big picture
The Articles worked like thirteen roommates sharing a house with no landlord. They could vote on house rules, but nobody could make a roommate pay their share of the bills, nobody was in charge of enforcing the rules, and changing the lease took all thirteen signatures. Shays' Rebellion showed how dangerous that setup was, and it pushed the Framers to build a national government with the power to tax, regulate commerce, raise an army, and enforce its laws.
Uses for Argumentative Essays
- Principles: federalism (the Articles are the extreme, state-centered version of it), limited government, and state sovereignty.
- Where it shows up: Unit 1, Topic 1.4 (EK 1.4.A.1, which lists the weaknesses above: no centralized military to handle Shays' Rebellion, no executive to enforce laws including taxes, no national courts, no power over interstate commerce, and no exclusive power to coin money). The CED also links it to Topics 1.3, 1.5, and 1.7 and to Topic 3.7.
- In an argument essay: use the Articles as evidence that a central government that's too weak fails (Shays' Rebellion, unpaid debts, trade wars between states), which supports the Constitution's shift of power to the national government. On the other side, they show the kind of state-centered confederation that Anti-Federalists like Brutus preferred over one large, consolidated republic.