Articles Of Confederation Flaws Essay

The Articles of Confederation was the first attempt at a sort of constitution for the United States of America. This imperfect document was adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15th, 1777, but not entirely ratified until March 1st, 1781 when Maryland eventually agreed to the legislation, making it official. It was severely under powered and lacked simple concepts that are now common sense. The federal government had little, if any, power and there was no executive branch to check the others, these problems made the federal government practically nonexistent. Flawed as it was, the Articles of Confederation did have its accomplishments, it was used by Congress to handle business, it lead the colonies in the Revolutionary War, and

This lead to the exclusion of taxation powers in the federal government, meaning they had very little money to pay their large debt from the war, pay the soldiers for their service, or even just run the government. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress was only able to simply request money from the states, of course the states rarely met these requests, which left the federal government with very little money and very little power overall. After the American Revolutionary War, the United States had a large debt to many different countries and was now unable to pay it off because it raised virtually no money under the Articles of Confederation. Also, the states and Congress shared the right to coin money and regulate said money. Currency was overprinted and created an economic crisis due to the inflation caused from the shared power of printing the currency. The lack of economic power and a stable economy lead to the founding fathers calling the Constitutional Convention because they knew that the country could not operate for long under the current economic

Requirements to pass a law or amendment to the Articles were way too strict and lead to little actually happening because unanimity was rarely had between all the states. Every single state had to approve of an amendment for the Articles, which was virtually impossible because of how different each state's beliefs were. Also, nine out of thirteen states had to approve of new laws, which was much easier, but still created a very weak federal government. These harsh requirements created a stalemate much of the time because one state would be a holdout, or only eight states would vote for a new law, it just was not a great system. Additionally, each state was given a single vote despite the population. This angered the larger states because they felt as though they should be worth much more than the other states, which would make sense. For example, of the about three million people in the United States in 1780, a small state such as Rhode Island or Delaware, with around fifty thousand people, could decline an amendment to the other two million people in the country. This is absurd and lead to very little actually happening due to the lack of unity in the states. The Articles of Confederation had hardly any political unity and lead the founding fathers to call the Constitutional Convention and rid the United States of the weak