Successes And Failures Of The Articles Of Confederation

The “search for national government” in Brinkley (2011) is broken down into five sections. The five sections are as follows The Confederation, Diplomatic Failures, The Confederation and the Northwest, Indians and the Western Lands, and finally Debts, Taxes, and Daniel Shays. In addition to discussing each section I will outline the successes and failures of the Articles of Confederation.

After fighting a war with an overly restrictive and powerful federal government in the English monarchy America wanted the complete opposite from its own federal government. In this desperate attempt to not create another England the States underestimated the need for a strong centralized federal government. The Articles of Confederation was first adopted

Population increased in the area west of the Appalachians and as a result Congress needed to find a way to divvy up the land. Several ordinances were put in place to ensure the land was divided properly. The first was the Ordinance of 1784 which divided the territory into 10 districts. Each could eventually petition for statehood once their populations equaled that of the smallest existing state. Next the Ordinance of 1785 surveyed the lands north of the Ohio river and divided them into equal rectangular townships. In each township there were four sections set aside for the United States and one for school revenue. The most important part of this ordinance is that it advanced the idea, known as the grid, of dividing land into equal sections which we still do today. The ordinance of 1787 changed the districts because of some pushback from those opposed to how the land was sold. More important and more positive was that it established several rights for the inhabitants of that area which included freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury, and prohibition of

Unfortunately, there was one group that wasn’t happy about this well executed expansion and that group was the many Indians who already inhabited this area. Essentially the Confederation was dividing and selling land which already belonged to the Indians. There was much fighting between the Indians and white Americans. The Indians did have an earlier and significant win in 1791 however their victory was short lived. In 1794 the Indians, led by Little Turtle, suffered a huge loss in the Battle of Fallen Timbers at the hands of General Anthony Wayne. A year later the treaty of Greenville was signed, and the Indians handed over the rights to more land with the assurance that the lands they retained would be theirs to keep unless they decided to sell. Later this assurance would become useless and give way to more white expansion