Articles Of The Articles Confederation

The Articles of Confederation was the first system of government that the united states ever put into force, and is the only one they ever wrote besides the constitution. The articles was created due to a need for the United States to unite during the american revolution, and was basically a loosely bound union of states, so it was obvious that this was essentially just to semi-unite the states in order to fight the british, and they would form a more stable form of government after the fact, which they did when they wrote the constitution. I will now list the provisions of the Articles of Confederation.

Last year, our new government was formed. We agreed to what the Articles had said. It seems that now we are having issues with what we had once agreed with. In this newsletter, I will only address four of the most problematic things in the Articles of Confederation. However there are many more that will not be brought to light today.

With the United States new found independence from Great Britain, its founding fathers realize from their historical experiences that a document of law needed to be crafted and established to preserve its new found independence, while maintaining order. However, the first document crafted by the founding fathers, the Articles of Confederation, did preserve the country new found independence but it did not maintain order. The Articles of Confederation described by many founding fathers to be a document that was crafted to satisfy needs of every state for its ratification, even when the document did not present a responsible democracy. The Articles of Confederation granted all national powers to the congress; however, it allowed each state

It all started after the Declaration of Independence during the time America was busy fighting the Revolutionary War, when Congress realized that they needed to form a plan to move forward and unite the thirteen states as a nation.

The most significant issues that the United States had under the Articles of Confederation were: “managing the western expansion, foreign relations, and debt.” The first significant issue was with the western expansion as Americans relocated to the Nashville, western Pennsylvania, and Kentucky areas in mass numbers in the 1780s. The result of this meant that the areas were enhanced greatly that had western charters. At the time, the northern and southern areas (in the Appalachian Mountains and Mississippi River) had specific boundaries based on the original colonized charters which meant that the western area was the Pacific Ocean. The states that did not have part of the western area resented the condition and as a result, Maryland protested by not approving the Articles of Confederation unless the state of Virginia yielded its western land to the federal government which they did in 1784. However, their yielding was not without strings attached as they demanded that they be allowed to keep a small portion of the land reserve for their own use as a part of the deal which Congress had no choice but to accept. Eighteen years later in 1802, every state had yielded their western land to the federal government.

The topic of this paper is the Constitution. The paper will cover the weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation, which was addressed in the Constitution. The paper will cover the how the Constitution addressed the complaints in the Declaration of Independence. Another topic of the paper will be the Great Compromise and how the representation of states in Congress was determined. Finally, the paper will view the treatment of slaves for the purpose of representation and the effects thereof.

This document was written in the 18th century specifically during the Federalist Era. It was written 18 years after America won independence from England on July 4, 1776. This lead to the creation of the “Articles of Confederation” which were made primarily for the people because they feared central government having all power. Then at The Annapolis Convention (1786) is where the groundworks of “The U.S. Constitution” were discussed to replace the “Articles of Confederation”.

Speaking against the ratification of the Constitution, Patrick Henry says, "If a wrong step be now made, the republics may be lost forever. If this new government will not come up to the expectation of the people...their liberty will be lost and tyranny must and will rise..." The leaders of the country created the U.S. Constitution due to an immense dissatisfaction with the system of government stated in the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation support a government in which there is only one branch, but it's power would be limited in order to protect the people's liberty and rights. Although the Articles of Confederation establish a better system of government than when the states were under British rule, some weaknesses were found and amended in a new document called the United States

The Constitutional Convention convened in 1787 to discuss to revision of the Articles of Confederation. However, as the debates went on, the delegates soon discovered they needed to write a completely new form of government rather than revise the old one. This convention which created the ensuing Constitution was called because of the various problems with the Articles of Confederation, such as a federal government that was too weak and economic laws that were causing the American economy to decline rather than grow. These characteristics of the Articles built up over the years until the unrest became apparent to the state governments with a rebellion in Massachusetts. The first major problem with the Articles which led to the calling of the convention was the limited power they gave the federal government.

The United States of America first followed what was written in the Articles of Confederation, however instead of leading the country to success it lead the country to failure. Some of the articles were dreadful towards the nation, such as the fact that all states needed to agree on a change for the Articles of Confederation, the congress did not have power to tax citizens, and there was no national court system. The Articles of Confederation was very deficient that it was not able to support the country. One of the features of the Articles of Confederation was that all states needed to approve the changes to the Article of Confederation.

We needed a new Constitution badly for our foundling of a nation. The pressure of everything falling apart weighed heavily on the founders in that day, something had to be done to save America from disassembling after our triumphant separation from England. The Articles of Confederation simply weren’t working. Originally, the purpose of the Articles was to give as much power to the states as possible while still uniting them (text 48). The biggest problem was that thought the federal government could recommend and create policies, they could not enforce them, specifically if the states refused them. (text 48) Furthermore, the government was weak, with no real leadership and additionally, could not freely gather revenue from the states and suffered from this. (text 49) What finally pushed our country over the edge was Shays’ Rebellion, a protest of farmers led by Daniel Shays when they demanded change after being heavily taxed to recompense for the wartimes cost, but the government had no response, leading to an attack on state militia. (text 49) So thus, a Constitutional Convention was convened. Plenty disagreed, and these people were called the Anti-Federalists, and believed the document gave the government too

Although, the war was won and there were lots of flaws in the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution started shaping the laws and government in the nation. Democracy was something that may be hard for the people to handle according to Alexander Hamilton of New York, and it would also make them confused by the challenges of running the nation. The nation was on the European economic system which it had trouble and struggled. The people got married, raised families, bought slaves, they moved west and built new homes while daily life was going on. In the 1790 's the Politian 's was faced with a lot of questions such as could the leaders pulled the nation together and was the independence temporary? They all preached liberty and equality, but they went to great lengths to safeguard both slavery and taking control of Native American lands. During Thomas Jefferson 's reign as president stabilized and the land acquired helped start an economic revolution.

The aim of this paper is to talk about the different actions taken to replace the Articles of Confederation to bring about a new Constitution. I will first start out by giving some background on the Article of Confederation as to what it was and why it was important for the US? Secondly, I will provide the reader with some of the strengths and weaknesses of the Article of Confederation. Why did the Article of Confederation fail? Third, I will talk about the actions that were taken to replace the Article of Confederation and how these actions were worked out.

On November 15, 1777, the Articles of Confederation were named the first constitution of the united states. Even though they were adopted on this day, they did not become approved until 1781. The Articles did not give congress power to enforce its requests to the states for money or troops, and by the end of 1786 governmental effectiveness was broke down. The states had too much power, and the articles had many things that made it weak such as : each state had only one vote in congress, regardless of size, congress did not have the power to tax, there was no court system, and many other problems.  Although the Articles had many downfalls, there were a few achievements, which were : state claims to western lands were settled, and the Northwest

Recently, a meeting of delegates at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia met together with the purpose of revising The Articles of Confederation. Many important people were present, with the likes of Mr. George Washington, who was elected president of the delegation. A total of fifty-five members were present, and they had many opinions on how our new nation shall be operated, and many others. With many southern delegates threatening to pull out of the Union if slaves were to be set free, one significant issue from the beginning was the issue on how to represent the slave population. As the entire delegation was still traveling to Philadelphia, Mr. James Madison sketched together a plan for a bicameral legislature, which was widely accepted