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How Did The Articles Of Confederation Period Of American History Dbq

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The Articles of Confederation period of American history, from 1781 to 1789, was one of the most critical time periods when it comes to developing our nation’s government as a whole. After the colonist rebelled against the tyrannical Monarchy in Great Britain they needed to create a new form of government. This form of government they ended up creating was called the Articles of Confederation (AoC). The AoC was a document that established the functions of the brand new national government. However, from the very start of the new constitution all the way to their terrible ending 8 years later, it proved to be lacking the necessary tools to have a working U.S. government. Overall the AoC was made to be very simple and straightforward to …show more content…

Internally, laws being enforced to the states was a huge issue. Each of the 13 states doesn't think as a nation because they only think about what would be best for them and not the nation. Because of this many laws that miraculously passed in Congress were mainly ignored by the states unless it benefited them. On another note, as seen in document E, a map by John Blum, the larger states appealed to the Congress just this once to cede their lands in the west for the Congress to give out evenly. Furthermore, the letter from the Rhode Island Assembly to Congress shows yet another flaw in the AoC. It basically states that the government simply wasn't able to tax any of the colonists because of the need for 10 out of 13 states to accept the taxing on imports. Since Rhode Island is a heavily commercial state none of the other states that revolved around commercial goods would vote for it either, this is way less than a 10 out of 13 vote. Even further, because the congress did not have the power to tax the army and their funds relied solely on donations from others as indicated in the letter from Joseph Jones to George Washington. Even if the Congress asked for money or made a law including a tax no one was actually forced to follow it because of the individual freedom of each of the states. This was a huge problem created by the AoC because Congress wasn't able to provide enough money for a sufficient army because they couldn't pay their soldiers properly, and this lead to a very poorly defended

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