Confederation and Constitution Essay

On September 17, 1787 framers in Philadelphia signed “The Constitution of the United States in which it was approved on June 21, 1788 by the ninth state. Once confirmed, along with the addition to the Bill of Rights it developed a mutual standard by which Americans determined the responsibilities and limits of their government. Looking to the Constitution to decide political discrepancies has helped to substitute and preserve a general agreement among people that are otherwise diverse. The Constitution, although two centuries of complications and trials of the American experiment in self-government, is a testament to the cleverness and anticipation of its framers.

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.

While the Articles of Confederation unified the American colonies for the first time, the individual states had a hard time allowing a central government to solely control their territory. Due to fear of an all powerful monarchy like the one they had experienced in England the colonies were wary of allowing a central government certain powers. These certain powers included control of commerce, ability to tax, and even the ability to act directly upon individual citizens of a state. While the Articles provided a loose confederation to unify the new country, they were only a temporary solution due to their obvious weaknesses in several areas. The Articles of Confederation were essentially

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.

The Articles of Confederation was the first constitution of the United States. They were written during the revolutionary war to create a more unified government, and to establish what the national government could and could not do. The Articles let each state keep “sovereignty, freedom, and independence,” and created a very weak central government. For example, Congress could not regulate commerce or impose taxes. The impact that the Articles of Confederation had on federalism for the next few years was: the federal government had very few powers, and most of the authority remained in control of each individual state.

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

There were many problems and weaknesses contained in the Articles of Confederation. This was a problem for the country because the government could not have enough control over it. One of these problems was that the Congress did not have the power to coin its own money (Kelly). This meant that each individual state could create its own currency that could not be used country-wide. Congress was also unable to tax (Kelly). They could only borrow money from other countries or from its own citizens. Since the United States was in

The Articles of Confederation confirmed the weak decentralized system which was already in operation. The Articles did not make it clear that the Congress was to be a real government. It was therefore, an uncertain central government. Many people felt that the colonists should just try to set up a new confederation

First, the Articles of Confederation were viewed as an overall weakness. It did not allow congress to obtain really any power over the people; therefore we had a weak central government. Congress was not granted the power that they needed in order to keep things in order,“Probably the most unfortunate part of the Articles of confederation were that the central government could not prevent one state from discriminating against other states in the quest for foreign commerce.” (Ginsberg, et. al. 2014: 35). States were rebelling and our new found country was in chaos and our Congress was not able to prevent states from discriminating against other states. For example, another downfall to this document was that, “The Articles of Confederation were concerned

The Articles of Confederation caused many problems for our founding fathers. There were many important factors that were abandoned in order to run a functional nation. Some of the problems were: no federal army, no national currency, the federal government could not tax, there were no centralized courts for interstate crimes, and it was extremely difficult to pass a law and almost impossible to pass an amendment. Lucky for us our founding fathers met in Philadelphia and discussed how they can approve on the Confederation. Eventually they came up with the Constitution of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Before the Constitution was created there was a lot of arguing and compromising done. Without compromise it would be impossible to

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 simple difference between the Articles of Confederation and US Constitution is that the articles were not strong enough to hold our young nation together. The articles operated the US as separate states. Under the articles, it was very difficult to pass laws since the requirement of 9 out of the 13 states ' approval was needed for ratification. The Articles created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments. The need for a stronger Federal government soon became apparent and eventually led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The members of the Constitutional Convention signed the United States Constitution on September 17, 1787 in

“The Constitution devotes the national domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare and to liberty” (Maier 154). This quote, stated by William Henry Seward, displays the strength and stability that the Constitution had over the nation, and the liberty and justice it supplied for all of its citizens. Although the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation have similarities, they have many differences, which proved that the Articles of Confederation were a weaker document in comparison. It can be said that the Articles were the “rough draft” to the final living document, which significantly influenced and “ruled” our government, as it still does today.

They did not trust strong governments, so the central government very little power (Murphy). There was no court system given to the national government so the states were in charge of it all, which meant complaints could not be filed against them (Brackemyre). One of the only powers the national government had was to declare war but they were not allowed to raise an army to fight it and it lacked a chief executive to conduct foreign affairs. The United States also had an ineffective legislative under the Articles of Confederation. Amendments that they wanted to be passed needed to be vote on unanimously and there had to be a nine out of thirteen vote to pass a law (Kelly). Each state also had only one despite their population. Under the Articles, the government did not have a stable economic system, lacked key central leadership and had an inefficient legislature.