Articles Of Confederation Failure Essay

The Failure of The Articles of Confederation The articles of Confederation was a written document that explained the functions for the national government. It was also the first US Constitution. The Articles were put into place in 1781. The writers of the Articles hoped to give less power to the government so complete over rule was not possible. The reasons why it failed miserably were that forced taxation was near impossible, very hard to hold a strong military appearance, and that each state over powered the nation its self in power. In the time period of the publication of the Articles, the authors were most likely suffering from remembrance of England’s taxes. Clearly showing why they wanted to cut the federal governments power to tax. This idea ended up coming back to bite the US. It was bad because “taxes not only raise revenue but they can regulate too.” For instance, if a government raised taxes on tobacco products, it will show the governments distastes towards tobacco and make less people buy it. If the companies were to say anything and try to fight the tax the government could say it was to raise revenue because so many people use tobacco products. This shows how important it really is

The federal governments inability to tax made funds low, this made it hard to pay military people. This for 1 made the US venerable and if other nations caught wind of low numbers of military forces they would have tried to attack. As seen in Shays rebellion, a man named Dan Shays became tired of the government making him pay his farm taxes, later on he faced brutal penalty’s. So he started riots and causing havoc. If someone or a group of people were to do this today the small states would call upon the federal government to send National guard to deal with the problem. Back during the Shays rebellion there was no one to help them so the government had to ask for