Pros And Cons Of The Articles Of Confederation

468 Words2 Pages

After the Revolutionary War the thirteen colonies wanted a government to replace the British system they wanted overthrown. So they came up with the Articles of Confederation. The articles went into effect in 1781, but were short lived because they had too many flaws in them to work effectively. Even though they went into effect there was still a problem the colonies had and that was that they had no real national leadership. Another inherent weakness was that congress did not have the power to levy or collect taxes from individuals. Taxes were collected by each state from the citizens within and then the money was too turned over to the government. Another flaw was the fact that congress did not have any power when it came to regulating …show more content…

When political leaders met in Philadelphia to figure out how they could strengthen the Articles of Confederation they soon realized that they needed to replace the entire thing with the US Constitution. Those that did not support the constitution were became known as the anti-federalist and those that supported it were known as the Federalists. The federalist wrote the Federalists Papers that were published in newspapers trying to gain support for the constitution. Two states, Massachusetts and South Carolina wrote up a resolution list to ratify the Constitution in order to get them to support it. Both states wanted “all Powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution to be reserved to the several States to be by them exercised” (Avalon Project, 1788). Massachusetts also wanted one representative for every 30,000 people from the census that the Constitution mentioned until there were 200 representatives. According to the reading last week the antifederalists wanted a bill of rights to secure the rights of the people. Madison argued with them stating that “the constitution is itself….a BILL OF RIGHTS” (Divine 2013, p. 152). The Antifederalists wanted to make certain that the people’s rights of free speech, and freedom of religion were protected and this is one thing that the Bill of