Pros And Cons Of The Articles Of Confederation

In 1777, the Continental Congress drafted the first constitution, known as the Articles of Confederation. These articles formed a loose confederation of the thirteen states as opposed to a strong and unified country. Due to that, the government soon began facing numerous difficulties under the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles, there was only an unicameral governing body without any separation of powers. Likewise, since the majority of the power resided in the states, the central government was quite feeble. Congress did not even have the ability to tax, which meant it was impossible to get through the debt. Another issue was that in order to amend the Articles, unanimous approval of the states was required, making amending the

At this convention twelve of the thirteen (Rhode Island declined to participate) states sent delegates. They could all agree that Congress should have the power to regulate interstate/ international commerce and that Congress should have the power to tax. But while at the convention not everything ran so smoothly, two plans arose; the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan. The Virginia Plan based the quantity of representatives/senators on the state’s populace and the New Jersey Plan wanted equal representation regardless of population. To settle this issue, they came up with the Great Compromise which stated the House of Representatives would be based on the state’s populace and the Senate would be equal for all states regardless of population. But then the issue of slaves arose, should they be counted, so to solve this problem they came up with the ⅗ Compromise which counted each slave as three-fifths a person in regard to

Soon plans emerged, Hamilton believed that they should pay the foreign debt/interest, impose excise taxes and tariffs, and create a national bank and currency. But the southern states believed that they had done their job of paying their own debts and wondered why they should bail out the northern states. In order to reach a compromise, Congress approved Hamilton's plan, but promised that in ten years the national capital would move southward, between Maryland and Virginia. Then came the Whiskey Rebellion, which caused two parties to emerge: the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans, which set the path of the two party system the U.S has