Compare The Strengths And Weaknesses Of The Articles Of Confederation

The Constitution of the United States of America was framed in part by The Articles of

The Articles of Confederation was first written in 1777. It was passed by the Confederation of Congress. Congress decided that they needed a firm government to organize the states as a whole. At least that was their primary goal. Since each state had separates rules. The Articles of Confederation was later ratified by each state in 1781. It was “America’s first federal constitution” (Keene 138). The confederation had a few strengths but many weaknesses. The nation faced many economic and political issues that lead people to controversy.

The Articles of Confederation were developed after the Revolutionary War, and were a good idea to help set standards for America. However, they had some major problems that needed to be solved in order for America to become a strong nation. After these problems were addressed the Constitution was developed.

One of the main disadvantages of the Articles of Confederation was that it encouraged a weak central government. Because nine out of thirteen states had to agree upon a law in order for it to be established, very few laws were passed. Amendments of the Articles of Confederation were never passed because the vote had to be unanimous. Not many decisions were made and the Congress generally only had the power to make treaties, deal with foreign affairs, and declare war. The Articles of Confederation read, “Each state shall contain its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right…” (Article II) The states had the most power and the Congress very rarely made decisions that affected the internal affairs of the states or country. There was only one house of Congress where each state only had one vote. This did not allow the bigger states with a greater population to have an advantage over the smaller states, which one could perceive as unfair in certain circumstances. Also, there was no judicial branch, which meant that if a case was not solved on a state level, it had nowhere to go. Fundamentally, the states held the most power. The lack of power within the Congress led to economic crisis.

They were a few shortcomings and advantages in the new government under the Articles of Confederation I would like to discuss. First of all the weaknesses that articles of confederation have gone through were certain people in the congress lacked leadership, could not tax, there militia or military was small, and one vote per state. The advantages they had were that they could borrow money and make peace also sign treaties. There were several sentiments and ideas. The “new vision want to make political authority legitimate and secure liberty” (Wilson, 2008, p.20). The system of government was established by articles to respect liberties given to them. Founding fathers replaced the document because certain states used the document for different

During the era or time in which the Articles of Confederation were in place, the document had a lot of weakness; maybe too many weaknesses. These weaknesses included: It had created a struggling economy, had no Judiciary, only had a legislature (Congress), no executive (President), and gave too much power to the states or the people. A weakness that the Articles had been that the people thought that the government would help with the economy. This caused a struggling economy, and that had a lot of consequences like Continental Army marching against the government for

The Articles of Confederation have strengths and weakness. I am going to start with the strengths. The first strength and the important one is having thirteen colonies united under one government that make these colonies a strong country together. Another strength is given the departments a specific defined roles for various parties to run the country more effectively. The Articles of Confederation inspired the coordination and cooperation between different states, so that’s also one of the strength of the Articles of Confederation. “It allowed the Central Government to sign treaties and peace deals with other countries giving rise to a stable neighborhood. The peace treaty with England was one such deal.” (Web) Having a stable country is most important thing to have a strong new country, and to have a stable country it should be peace between the states. And that is what the Article of Confederation accomplished. Finally, the population got increased to more than 60000 as big untied country and that could increase the economy of the country too because more people means more tax.

The Articles of Confederation, although a big first step, had more weaknesses than strengths. In fact, the major downfall of the Articles of Confederation was its weakness. Under the Articles, the federal government had little power and was too weak to enforce any laws. The Articles gave Congress the power to pass new laws but they did not have any power to enforce them. If a state decided that they did not want to follow a law then they could just ignore it. Congress also had no power to regulate trade or levy taxes and without an executive leader or federal court system there was no way to enforce anything. Another large downfall of the Articles of Confederation is that to Amend it required a unanimous decision which in most cases is extremely difficult. Because the Articles of Confederation are often considered a failure, it’s easy to look past the achievements of the American government under those Articles. The most important piece of legislation passed under the Articles of Confederation is the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. This Ordinance provided the guidelines by which new states would use to be admitted into the Union. Judges and Governors appointed by Congress would oversee a territory until there was five-thousand free male citizens of voting age. The citizens would then elect a territorial legislature, which sent a non-voting delegate to Congress. When the population hit sixty-thousand, the territorial legislature would be eligible to submit a state constitution,

Although the Articles had some strengths, it’s weaknesses outweighed them and are what essentially led to its downfall. The federal government had little power and was unable to enforce laws. The Continental Congress had borrowed money during the Revolutionary war and was unable to pay those debts. Another weakness of the Articles of Confederation was brought to light in 1786, by Shay’s Rebellion. The rebellion protested increasing debt and the economic chaos. Under the Articles, the national

The weaknesses of the Articles of the Confederation were more than enough to come together to redo them to form the New Constitution. A few weaknesses were that there was one vote per state in Congress (size did not matter of state). Congress has no power to tax. Congress had

The Articles of Confederation was the United State’s first constitution, it was written in an effort to unite the states after the American Revolution and served as a blueprint for the modern constitution. In order for the Articles to become official, they had to be approved by all thirteen colonies. Although Congress sent the Articles of Confederation to the states around the end of 1777 to become ratified, they were not officially adopted until March 1, 1781. Under these Articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. The American people feared a strong national government and as a result of this, the Articles of Confederation were specifically designed to be weak in the sense that each state maintains its own sovereignty and all rights to govern themselves, with the except of the rights exclusively granted to Congress. Since the Articles lacked many necessary components to keep a nation properly structured, they were eventually revised into the constitution we recognize today. Although, the Articles of Confederation seemed as though it only contained weaknesses, within the document, many strengths and accomplishments were made. Overall, the Articles of Confederation were proven to be both efficient and non-efficient during the time period they were in effect.

The weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation were the government was unable to make the states to observe their laws, there was no authority to tax or implement laws, Congress did not have any solid and stable leadership, there was no Army or Navy as-well-as no policies in place to draft soldiers, no court system, states could individually distribute their own paper money, states could individually place tariffs on trade among each state, lack of authority to regulate interstate commerce, no means to impose and administer treaties, challenging to pass laws because a 2/3 vote was required which also made it challenging to amend laws because there needed to be a unanimous vote from all 13 states to change the Articles.

What were the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation? The national gov't. couldn't compel the states to comply with its laws, it didn't have the ability to assessment, it didn't have the ability to authorize laws, Congress needed solid and consistent initiatives, there was no national armed force or naval force, there was no arrangement of national courts, every state could issue its own paper cash, and every state could put taxes on exchange between states.

The failure of the Articles of Confederation help the founders to create a more stable government system with the Constitution. The flaws in the Articles helped them make changes that made the new system very effective. Under the Constitution, Congress had a right to levy taxes (Feldmeth). This fixed the problem of the government always running short on funds because they could only request taxes from the government. They were also able to raise an army to deal with threats, something they were not able to do under the Articles. States are more evenly represented under the Constitution instead of being

The national government of the United States had many challenges under the Articles of Confederation. The Articles caused money problems and the most essential detail, a weak government. This also caused America conflicts among each of the 13 states. These problems greatly impacted the United States and it’s government as well.