Although the Articles of Confederation were certainly an essential phase favoring democracy, the reality is they were not a productive form of government. The Articles of Confederation were an important means for creating the type of democracy that we have today, although, there were many weaknesses leaving Americans with the feeling that the union appeared to be basically a group of confederate states, and Congress was merely a political gathering, serving thirteen self-governing states. 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. An instance to demonstrate the weakness of the Articles of Confederation is the way Congress handles problems, such as, the process required to improve the western lands attained by the United States in the Treaty of Paris. With Congress unable to handle problems
The Articles of Confederation could also be determined ineffective. They did not provide a president, any kind of executive agency, or judiciary and they did not have any kind of tax base or way to pay off state and national debts. Document A shows how ineffective the government was because it was unable to impose taxation due to a very small minority. Rhode Island rejected the tax so the government decided not to put it into effect. If taxes had been put in place, some of the state and national debts may have been able to be paid off. Without a strong leader, basic things like taxes cannot be imposed, which is why the Articles were so ineffective. They did not provide a way for the states to be controlled.
After the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederation were created to create a stronger and more effective government. However, it failed as a result of an ineffective government. From 1781 to 1789, the articles of confederation were ineffective and failed to provide a strong government.
The Articles of Confederation were placed as a form of temporary government. However, the Articles did not address the many problems the United States was having and going to have at the time. Therefore The Articles of Confederation were one of the weakest forms of functioning governments.
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,
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
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
In my opinion, I the one weakness of the Articles of Confederation was the lack of one leader in control such as the President.
The articles of confederation were first put into place in 1777 as a temporary constitution preparing for if the colonists won the revolution against Britain. The colonists did win the war and used the Articles of confederation as their constitution for 10 years even though it was only meant to be temporary. The Articles of Confederation were effective in controlling foreign relations with other countries. However the articles of confederation were ineffective in improving the country's economy and in controlling western borders in a reasonable way. Therefore we had no stable way of improving our economy or efficient way for the federal government to control the western settlement of the colonists and the indians they angered.
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.
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.
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.