The Articles Of Confederation Was Ratified In 1787

After the 13 colonies had declared independence from Britain and King George, they were quick to draft their own constitution. Most of which was inspired by Enlightenment thinkers and their philosophies, like those of John Locke, Montesquieu, and copious amount of more. The Articles of Confederation first drafted in the year 1777, but was not ratified until 1781. Nonetheless, this was quickly changed when people realized that the Articles of Confederation was ineffective. Therefore, it was replaced and led to the Constitution to be drafted. Which was soon ratified in 1787. The reason for the transition is that the Articles of Confederation had proved to be too weak to keep the nation united but the with the new Constitution, they were able

For one, for the Articles of Confederation to be even be ratified in the first place they need all the states to ratify it. That causes one problem from the start. As stated earlier, the national government had “no executive, there was also was no judicial authority and no other means of enforcing the Congress’s will.” (pg. 36). Without an executive branch to enforce laws, nor a judicial branch established in the national government, Congress could practically do nothing. Further evidence that the national government was useless is that “central government could not prevent one state from discriminating against other states in the quest for foreign commerce.” (pg. 36). It also does not help the fact that the national government could not make a treaty without the approval of at least 9 states or consulting with all of the 13 states, because of this, other people took advantage of this. A perfect example is when the United States attempted to formulate a treaty with the British. In which they swiftly responded with, “that, because the United States under the Articles of Confederation was unable to enforce existing treaties, it would negotiate with each of the 13 states separately.” (pg. 36). The national leaders saw this, which led to them wanting to fix the Articles of Confederation. But the final straw that led to delegates to abandon the idea of revising the Articles of Confederation

Naturally, they had tried to avoid the problems they had with the Articles of Confederation and so they structured the Constitution differently. Instead of letting state governments to have all the power while the national government was left to be weak, the Constitution tried to balance it out and worked more as a federalist system. Now the national government was finally able to establish an executive branch, along with a judicial branch. The power to tax and regulate interstate commerce were given the national government this time (Module 2.2). The Article VI had allowed national government to have jurisdiction over states in that “national laws and treaties “shall be the supreme Law of the Land” and superior to all laws adopted by any state or any subdivision.” (pg. 46). Other than that, most of the powers had stayed with the