The Primary Weaknesses Of The Articles Of Confederation

With a revolution starting, the thirteen colonies needed to implement a new government to replace, and improve upon the British one that the colonies were fighting against. The Founding Fathers’ first attempt at such a government was drafted and defined in the Articles of Confederation. This draft was put in front of the Second Continental Congress in 1777. It was completely ratified and adopted by March 1, 1781. While battles large and small enveloped the fledling country, it was written quickly, and in the grand scheme of things was also adopted and implemented rather quickly.

Why did the Framers of the United States ultimately decide to give more power to the Federal Government rather than the state governments? There were many problems and weaknesses with the Articles of Confederation. Some of the weaknesses was that congress did not have the power to tax, couldn’t regulate trade between the states or foreign countries. They had no National court system, the articles could not be amended without the commitment of all 13 colonies. Despite all the problems and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation there were some good things about it or “strengths”, like it created the first official government of the United States, and the state had no authority to tax or regulate state-to-state trade.

The thought process behind the Articles of Confederation was to create a document that created division between states with laws but also created confederacy by creating national laws to protect the defense of the country. - (Khan Academy) This would make it so that the state governments would have freedom to rule their own territories given to them without much national laws preventing them from controlling over everything. - (Khan Academy). The Founding Fathers also wanted to make the Articles of Confederation because they wanted to divide power and not let all of it be based on one-person ruling.

Under Article II of the Articles of Confederation, “each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right….” As a direct result, the states had retained too much power relative to the national government. The Congress had no money and could not seem to raise any, given the requirements that all thirteen states had to agree on tax. The outcome of the individual states having the power to tax was the government did not make any money. These ascendancies had been left to the states under the Articles of Confederation, causing the national economy to fall apart.

The Articles of Confederation was a step in the right direction of democracy. However, the document was fundamentally weak. In this essay, I argue that the Articles of Confederation was not the ideal governmental model. Primarily, the weakness of the Articles of Confederation revolves around the weak central government's inability to tax.

How the Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation Outweigh The Strengths In 1775 The American Revolution was uncontrollable, with Britain and the colonies, at the time, going head to head fighting for control. During the chaos, the new nation acknowledged that it needed a stable government if they were going to win the war. Their leaders wrote a set of rules to help control the country in 1777. The Articles of Confederation were a set of rules to be the first document that established the functions of their national government after it declared independence.

And lastly they just did not give the government enough power. When the Articles of Confederation came into play, they did not work as planned. With them, there was not really an executive branch. There also was not a judicial branch of government. All there was was a legislative branch, which was the Congress.

This lead to the exclusion of taxation powers in the federal government, meaning they had very little money to pay their large debt from the war, pay the soldiers for their service, or even just run the government. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress was only able to simply request money from the states, of course the states rarely met these requests, which left the federal government with very little money and very little power overall. After the American Revolutionary War, the United States had a large debt to many different countries and was now unable to pay it off because it raised virtually no money under the Articles of Confederation. Also, the states and Congress shared the right to coin money and regulate said money. Currency was overprinted and created an economic crisis due to the inflation caused from the shared power of printing the currency.

As it applies to the Articles of Confederation there were many weaknesses in the way it went about governing the United States. For one, the loose federation of the states was too weak to act as a foundation to be considered or act as a central government. In addition the state legislatures had too much power and in turn had the ability to influence economic issues of all kinds. This strong legislature is the same one that allowed for mob ruling and actions by debtors. The Articles of confederation were also weak because the required congress to have all 13 colonies in agreement when a new tax was to be passed.

Also, Congress would have the power to tax, and get enough resources to back the currency up. Inflation wouldn’t have happened if Congress had the power to tax, since the money would have had value, and people would buy and sell more. Debt wouldn’t have had happened if Congress could tax because they could raise enough money to pay off their debts. Britain wouldn’t have broken its promise and would let Americans in the profitable markets if the central government wasn’t weak. They would have the power to override the states, and force them to pay the Loyalists, which in turn, would gain Britain’s favor.

The constitution was able to address the problems with the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution created a Federalist government with a strong central government at the national level and weaker governments at state and local levels. It gave the national government the power to tax, draft troops, control interstate commerce, etc. Also because of the failure of the Articles of Confederation the Bill of Rights was established. With the Bill of rights in place and all the news laws into order the constitution was able to repair the failure that the Articles of Confederation

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.

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 Articles of the Confederation was the first government constitution that the United States used, and, although there were strength like the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, there were major weaknesses of the Articles of the Confederation like the following: requiring 9 out of the 13 colonial votes from the representatives from different states to pass a law; having no executive and judicial branch; and the federal government being unable to impose tax revenue onto the states. Such flaws would eventually lead to the Constitution and the repeal of the articles, for the Constitution was a measure to fix the problems of the articles with a stronger government that allowed them to impose taxes and and implement new laws for a more effective government.

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.