It was the heat of the Revolutionary war and The Thirteen Colonies were preparing to declare their independence from Britain, yet before they do so, they needed to establish a form of self-government. Through the Articles of Confederation in 1776, the colonies had established their first independent government, although with it followed many problems. These problems, although numerous, did not come without some, yet very little, success and perhaps one of the best outcomes of the Articles of Confederation is how they paved the way for the much sturdier Constitution. The Articles of Confederation had been created in a rush and by were no means a permanent form of government for the colonies. The government which the colonies had established had sought to contrast the English Parliament in every way possible. The government, in fear of electing corrupt leaders, lacked an executive branch and stayed away from …show more content…
Without an executive branch and president, the government would rely on its perpetual union to resolve political affairs. This however lead to much disorder and a lack of unanimity within the Confederation, as establishing new legislature and administering tariffs would require a consensus of nine of the thirteen colonies. Receiving votes from the colonies happened to also be flawed, as each colony would be represented with one vote, so that “some sixty-eight Rhode Islanders had the same voice as more than ten times that many Virginians” (Kennedy, Cohen 164). This was a nonsensical voting system and led to much of the colonies being misrepresented in Congress. Much disagreement and bitterness was given by the states when deciding how to divide the Trans-Allegheny land gained from the war; this was solved by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 which founded several new states and provided them with educational “sections” allowing for a remarkable success of the new states, and this can also be noted as one of the few successes which originated from the