The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution have changed our government by separating how the US is ruled from other governments. In all seven continents, there are hundreds of thousands of countries. Each country has its own way of protecting their people and ruling the country. There are dictatorships, democracies, monarchies, and many other kinds. The Articles of Confederation was the first document that governed the people. After the Revolutionary war was won, the founders wanted a government that was for the people. They wanted to form a strong government where responsible leaders were in charge and an incident like King George never happened. The Articles of Confederation was a brief plan for our government. It didn’t go into as much detail as the Constitution, and some parts of it were unbalanced. The checks and balances we have today that prevents people from getting too much power did not exist in the articles. People were scared of a weak government. What would happen when their fellow citizens got unruly. Others were afraid of a strong government. Would their government use power and fear to rule them in an unjust way? The questions the government officials faced confused and upset the people of the US. Why wasn’t the government taking charge. They won the war, what was it all for? Rebellions such as Shays Rebellion began congregating in the …show more content…
Listening to the people, they created a new document with compromises, checks and balances, and things to keep America in line. There wouldn’t be anyone seizing power. No one would disrupt the justice. The people would get a say in their government, and the monarchy of Great Britain was long gone. What we have in our government is what makes it distinctly different from other countries. Governments don’t have written documents to keep their countries in line. The Constitution isn’t just there to keep the citizens in line, it keeps those in government in line
There were many differences between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. At the end of the American Revolution the free states needed some sort of control that would generate to a unified country. Issues arose such as: How should power be divided between local and national governments? How should laws be made, and by whom? Who should be authorized to govern those laws? How could the government be designed to protect the unalienable individual rights? Their first attempt at solving this issue was the Articles of Confederation, which was a failure for the most part, but not completely. After the failure of the articles, the state delegates tried to revise the articles, but
The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution are two very important guidelines of government that shaped the political minds of the Americans. Mainly because these guidelines limited, or expanded the powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branch. The Articles of Confederation were a series of laws that gave more power to the state government than the federal government. As a result, the federal government could not enforce laws or levy taxes. After Shay’s Rebellion, the Founding Fathers realized that a change was necessary. So the Constitution was created. The most important change of the Constitution was that the majority of power was then shifted into the hands of the federal or central government. This allowed the federal
The three major issues the Articles of Confederation brought upon the United States were: managing the western expansion, foreign relations, and debt.
After the American Revolutionary War, the men in the Second Continental Congress were faced with a monumental challenge, creating a document that would democratically frame the new United States government in the spirit of liberty and freedom. While they spent much time and effort writing and ratifying this document, they were hindered by past experiences and prejudices against their previous mother country, Great Britain. The memories of imperial Britain, still fresh in the minds of the ex-colonists, caused them to include certain concepts of the Articles of Confederation that would prove detrimental to the functionality of the federal government. Although the American people desired to retain state sovereignty, they fashioned a form of government that bestowed excessive powers to the states, so severely that the national government could not effectively govern them
The Articles of Confederation were extremely important in the founding of our government today. The Articles gave us a sort of good base to start from, and was ground breaking in the shaping of our new nation.
There were many problems with the Articles of Confederation that led to its replacement by the U.S. Constitution. The states had more power than the federal government, leaving the federal government was weak. The federal government could not levy taxes, and the Articles gave major responsibilities such as negotiating treaties, coining money, and declaring war to state governments. Each state had one vote despite its population, and this angered many of the larger states who felt under-represented. Finally, the Articles lacked a judicial system, and required a unanimous vote to pass any legislature, which often proved difficult to achieve. The turning point that led to a demand for change was Shay’s Rebellion. Daniel Shay along with other farmers
The Articles of Confederation was able to find a way to include these new settlers into the newly formed nation. The Confederation was also able to, for a time, appease the states. One of the states’ biggest fears was a government that was too centralized thus evolving into a tyranny. The Confederation focused on decentralization, keeping the states content for a time. The Constitution on the other hand, was very centralized, creating a lot of controversy and conflicts between the states and congress.
The United States Constitution overcame the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and provided for the organization of the new government. After the American Revolution, colonists were trying to form a strong government because they wanted to be an independent country. The Articles of Confederation was the first written document the Continental Congress agreed on. It created a setup for the government for the nation as a whole, but it was very weak.
The Articles of Confederation provided a good establishment for the government to set rules. Eventually the Articles of Confederation wasn’t working anymore to keep the colonies under control. The colonies didn’t agree with the way the Articles of Confederation set the rules. All of the states only had ones vote no matter how big or small they were. This was a big deal for them because out of the 13 colonies Virginia had the biggest population and Delaware had the smallest. So when Delaware got its one vote it would account for a good majority of the people. But when Virginia got its one vote it was unfair because that one vote had to represent all of those people. So, because of the unfairness and the complaints the people of the thirteen colonies go rid of the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with the Constitution. The larger states wanted votes based on population but the smaller states wanted one vote per state. So the constitution helps solve this problem. It made a law that everyone would have the same amount of votes. The Articles of Confederation weakness influenced the constitution because of the way the Articles of Confederation failed. So the people in the thirteen colonies decided to make a better system and create the
Although the Articles of the Confederation became known as the United States’ first written constitution, it did not became ratified by all states until after four years after it was adopted and only lasted for 12 years until it was later replaced with the Constitution we used today. The Articles did set a foundation for our modern day constitution but in its early stages posed serious problems that lead to the drafting of a new constitution. Some of those problems included vesting the entire central government within just Congress (lack of Executive, and Judicial Branch), giving central government very limited power on how it handled state to state affair, and lack of national army because the army was composed of state militias. The articles
Under the Articles of Confederation, the government had little control over the individual states, and the nation was not organized or well protected. With the Constitution, three branches of government were created; legislative, executive, and judicial. The branches all checked each other, which kept them balanced, so one branch could not overpower the others. This created a strong but balanced government, that would keep the country organized. The Articles of Confederation did not create these sturdy branches, only tested them (Finkleman, Wallenstein 98).
“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.
The difference between the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation was that the Constitution had a stronger foundation than that of the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation were made to have just a weak central government and giving the government of states more power. Peace began to prove the rationale of wartime, which began to show how the Articles were weaker than everyone had thought. There began to be dividing of states and rebellions in the states and the rebellions started to threaten the fruits of Revolution. As time went on, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Wilson began the work on making on nation, under one main government.
The Articles of Confederation were the first attempt at a government system. This system was the cause of many conflicts between the colonies but eventually some of the ideas derived from it still helped form the constitution we abide by today.
The Articles of Confederation is the first constitution of the new United States, ratified by the Second Continental Congress on March 1st 1781. 1783 through 1789 is known as the era which America experienced tragic and weak government under an unskilled Confederation Congress. They brought an unstable economy and violence also class conflict. one argument about the power at the time was that there was no clear structure as to how money was collected from that states, and what power the continental congress had over taxes. which lead to conflicts and so did many other reasons, also it lead to the idea of making the constitution. Evan though the constitution is the most important document now there still were people who were against it the