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Strengths And Weaknesses Of The Articles Of Confederation

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The Articles of Confederation was one of the first official documents of the United States. From the beginning of the American Revolution, Congress felt the need for a stronger union and a government powerful enough to defeat Great Britain. During the early years of the war this desire became a belief that the new nation must have a constitutional order appropriate to its republican character. However, after a few short years the Articles were replaced by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Articles were a stepping stone which led to the Constitution however the Articles contained more weaknesses than strengths which forced the colonists to get rid of them and create a new document. Prior to the Revolutionary War, many of the original …show more content…

Due to the many weaknesses of the Articles the convention that was held to revise the articles ended up throwing away the Articles of Confederation and starting all over again. A weak congress was one of these weaknesses. “The Articles created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments” (Library of Congress). The main problem with the Articles of Confederation was that it failed to give power to the federal government. The new states needed to unify under one constitution and they needed to establish a soverign central government. The Articles of Confederation was a significant step toward national unity. Most American historians said that the Articles of Confederation were insignificant because of the subsidiary position occupied by the central government. The new states needed a central government. Congress had little power to impose upon the states. They could not regulate taxes, and this led to states taxing other states. It could not enforce power upon individuals, unify foreign and domestic policies, enforce treaties, or pass navigation …show more content…

“Before the Constitution could become "the supreme law of the land," it had to be ratified or approved by at least nine of the thirteen states” (Costly, 2002). The weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation introduced a great deal of interstate conflict, something that delegates, through the drafting of the Constitution, tried their best to solve. When the Founding Fathers signed the Constitution in 1787, it needed the ratification from nine states before it could go into effect. There were two sides to the Great Debate. The Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. The Federalists wanted to ratify the Constitution and the Anti-Federalists did not. One of the major issues these two parties debated concerned the inclusion of the Bill of

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er, the Articles placed the power in the hands of the state, which led to economic troubles; but it also led to leadership shortfall. The fact that there was no independent judiciary, no leader of foreign affairs, and an inability to deal with internal and external threats made, caused a lot of problems for America. Finally, the Articles of Confederation was ineffective in making a set of rules that made legislating under this structure inefficient. Each state had one vote, therefore, states with a large population or small population had the same weight in voting in Congress. It also took nine votes out of thirteen to approve legislation.

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The Articles of Confederation also known as the, Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an earlier document between 1776-1777. That was approved over many months of debate and is known as the 1st constitution of the United States between the first thirteen colonies. It was then to be ratified by all the 13 states that took nearly a full 4 years to do so. The idea of this constitution was to give sovereignty of all 13 states while the federal government only received powers that the states recognized were given to the King and Parliament, similar almost to the British. The Articles were inarguably terrible and had very little positive outcomes, most consider it to reap no benefits whatsoever and caused many conflicts between the states.

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As Armitage states “Each of the 13 states had a vote in the weak national Congress while a vote of 9 states was required in order to pass any laws and a unanimous vote of all 13 states was required for the Articles to be amended.” This gave all of the new states extreme power to make their own laws and pass them while defanging the new central government. It could not raise an army, collect taxes, regulate trade between the states or foreign trade markets, or force states to follow laws it set. The Constituion addresses these weaknesses by declaring that the new Federal Government had enumerated powers that were explicitly listed in Article One, Section 8 of the

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