Paige Balestrieri January 1st, 2017 Honors US History I Period 1 Chapter 9 Alternative Assessment Answers The Articles Of Confederation had many weak components to it. With those weaknesses, the one that stood out was how all power rested within the states. Without a lot of power in the central government but instead in the states, it caused a law to have to be passed throughout all of the states to be amended by the central government. With this, not a lot of laws were able to get amended. Another reason why the A.O.C. had to be replaced was how the states had the choice of paying taxes to congress or not doing so. This caused a shortage of money within the central government which made it difficult to pay off …show more content…
To start off, the Articles of Confederation was an influence for the US Constitution which is the reason for their similarities. One of these similarities is that both documents established a form of a national government and according to page 182 of “The American Pageant”, “powers that were to be exercised.” Although they both established a national government, the thing that made the two contradict each other was the power it had. Within the Articles of Confederation, the central government was made weak, the states being sovereign due to a fear of a strong central government abusing its power like Britain did prior to the American Revolution. However, in the Constitution, the central government had power over all the states instead of making them sovereign. Due to the Constitution allowing the states to be governed as a whole, it caused national unity as it also allowed national debt to start being payed off from the Revolutionary war from the states as a whole as opposed to letting states tax each other. Another similarity between these two documents was that states could not go alone into a war and had to depend on themselves as well as other states to contribute forces. The Articles of Confederation didn’t allow congress to deal with troops but states had that power instead. However, in the Constitution, congress dealt with troops …show more content…
A short term effect would have been difficulty to maintain an army. The states did have a way to have an army through sending delegates to serve, but due to a central government not controlling it, there would be some difficulty with keeping military situations under control. There would be very few short-term effects, but the long-term effects would have caused a lot of damage to the US. One of these effects would be the debt they had to pay off. Due to states having the option to not give any money to congress, it caused a shortage of money. If it wasn’t for the Constitution, congress wouldn’t have eventually gained the money to pay off their debt the Revolutionary War caused. Another long-term effect would’ve been conflict between states. With no national justice system set up, the sovereign states wouldn’t be able to settle disputes themselves. If these states couldn’t settle any disputes, it would’ve caused conflict and eventually, they would have completely turned against each other instead of allowing a
It also made international trade better because a foreign country would be trading with the whole US instead of a single state like Virginia or New York. This shows how the Constitution handled these economic problems in a different manner than the
The article of confederation were laws that the 13 states in the United States accepted and signed; while the U.S constitution is a set of rules that govern the nation's citizens. The articles of confederation has a lot of flaws with weaknesses like no power to tax, no national executive, no judicial/national court, no checks and balances; which all resulted in no money, no enforcement of laws, unequal representation. In comparison, the U.S constitution creates equal representation, meaning that small states have an equal voice. The U.S constitution also keeps disagreements from happening, allowing a better transition of power. In the 5th and 14th amendments, the constitution says that "the government shall not deprive anybody of life, liberty,
The Articles of Confederation strengths were democratic and state dominated, and its weakness was that the federal government had no power to tax and it couldn’t unify the states constitutionally by laws. The strengths of the Articles are few. The government under the Articles of Confederation successfully waged a war for independence against Britain. Additionally, the Articles also allowed states to dominate their own states, such as taxing, regulating the trade and economy, etc. However, under the Articles of Confederation, there was no chief executive, there was no court system, there was not even a way for the central government to force the states to pay tax.
The primary weakness of the Articles of Confederation is that each state retained all sovereignty over itself. Sovereignty is defined as ultimate authority over someone, something, or someplace. Although the National Government had enough power, it gave too much to the states. This lead to a plethora of problems that harmed the government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. One example of this was the states did not have to pay the government taxes.
This made them create the law that to pass any amendments, or to change any, it needed to have 2/3 of congress to vote on it and 3/4 of the states approval, unlike when they had the articles of confederation. The Articles of Confederation had to have all the states agree on an amendment. The only problem with this was that the states had different opinions and views, which resulted in nothing changing.
Ultimately it allowed the founding fathers to recognized the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and fix the shortage of this prestigious paper. As the Constitution was ratified it offered solutions to all the problems the nation was facing and brought all thirteen colonies into one. The Constitution created a system that divided Congress into two houses, first the House of Representatives then the Senate. This helped give people from the smaller states a voice against the bigger states and its people, which lead for equal representation. The ratification also gave the central government more power while Congress gained the power to enforce good interstate relations and regulate trade being made.
Considering the causes that led to the American Revolution the Articles of Confederation were a logical form of government for the revolutionaries to adopt because under the Articles of Confederation the states would be independent. With them being independent they could do anything they wanted, meaning they could make their own choices about what happens within their own state. Having Congress serve as the last resort on appeals means the states get to choose the outcome of disputes. Congress also had to maintain the treaties and alliances, army, and regulate money. The central government lacked the ability to control taxes, regulate the commerce and anything else that might have led to creation of new laws.
First, the Articles did not allow for the national government to collect taxes from the states or from the citizens, this starved the national government of vital funds it required to survive and function, the Articles provided no way for the national government to regulate commerce amongst the States. Because the states were so fragmented under the Articles, the already anemic central government could not speak to other nations with a cohesive voice, and any amendments to the Articles required the unanimous approval of all 13 states which solidified that no changes would ever be ratified; thus creating a fixed and never improving government. In addition, another downfall of the Articles was its lack of leadership and accountability within the national government, which was made obvious during Shay’s Rebellion in 1786 (Shea, Green, Smith 52). During the 1780s, due to the influx of imports, the United States experienced an economic depression. Farmers were hit the hardest because of the drastic drop in the value of their crops compared to previous years.
Following the Revolutionary War, America had just gained independance from Great Britain and needed to form a new government. The Articles of Confederation were established as an attempt to create a government that was unlike Britain’s. Unfortunately, the Articles of Confederation had several weaknesses. When in the process of repairing those weaknesses, the Federalists and the Anti-federalists formed. The Articles of Confederation were very weak as well as useless to America and because of this, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists could not agree on a new type of government.
Articles of Confederation vs. U.S. Constitution The Articles of the Confederation and the U.S. Constitution are two articles that where written and accepted by the United States as a foundation for their new government. They are both very important documents that have similarities and differences. Some of the main things the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution have in common is that they addressed the needs of its constituencies.
The most important difference between these documents was that the Articles of Confederation gave very little power to a central government and the Constitution created a strong central government. The Article of Confederation was written to unite states after the American Revolution. People had the fear of the government having too much power. This document established
To start off, the Articles of confederation, was in essence, the first constitution that gave more power to its states rather than the central government. It based its principles off being a union, and placed the building blocks to the constitution we have today. States were give the authority to rule over their affairs as they see fit. The constitution and the articles of confederation have a lot of similarities. Both articles gave the US a system of government.
The Articles of Confederation was an agreement among the thirteen original states of the United States that served as the first constitution. The Articles had first been introduced by Richard Henry Lee in the Second Continental Congress. Although the Articles of Confederation has made its contributions throughout history, the Articles, however, did not last very long and had been proven inadequate from the very start. I agree with this statement based on the examples and analysis of the Constitution I will soon provide. The Articles of Confederation were written during a time when the American people feared a strong national government.
The new government, the Constitution, is now able to enforces taxes, which allowed money to come in and the government was able to pay off their debt. One other weakness of the articles was that it gave all power to only one house of representative from each state, the constitution try to solve this matter that creating three separate branches of power, the Legislative branch, Executive branch, and the Judiciary branch, allowing the power to be more divided. Representation was another problem in under the Articles of Confederation because a big state like Massachusetts and a small state like New Jersey both have the same amount of representatives, the Constitution made a compromise by forming two house in Congress the Senate, where each state get equal representation, and the House of Representatives, where each state is represented by the population of the state. The Constitution also fixed the problem of passing a law; under the Articles of Confederation, laws can only be passed if 9 out of 13 representatives agrees on the law because of this not much laws were passed, now under the Constitution only 51 percent of the votes to pass the law. From this readers can infer that the Constitution fixed many of the defects in the Articles
In one hand, the Articles of Confederation had a weak central government, differing form the strong central government in the Constitution. The Constitution’s government had a structure of three different branches; the legislative, executive, and judicial branch; unlike the Articles of Confederation that had no structure whatsoever. The Articles of Confederation had many problems like, the poor international trade, poor foreign relations and a weak economy in contrast to the Constitution that only had one problem, the struggle over the ratification. the Articles of Confederation achieved the Northwest Ordinance and the Northwest Territory and according to a history website, the Constitution achieved that we had a system of checks and balances, that we had a bill of rights, and, eventually, the survival of a bloody civil war intact. Lastly, the Constitution had three compromises: the Great Compromise, the Three-Fifths Compromise and the Slave Trade compromise.