The colonies, under Great Britain, have been living under their rule in North America for one hundred and fifty years. Throughout those years, the colonists have been developing a new way to run the government. These colonists decided the first constitution would be the Articles of Confederation. Congress helped them adopt the Articles in 1777, but in the founders eye’s the articles were not working as well as they thought. What were some achievements of the Congress under the Articles of Confederation? Congress achieved four main ideas under the Articles of Confederation. The first achievement was successfully conducting a war between America and Great Britain. This revolution paved the way for the new country’s long sought after freedom. Secondly, in 1783 Congress negotiated a peace treaty, referred to as the Treaty of Paris, to end the American Revolution. This achievement gave the new government the opportunity to repair and renew the country after such a bloody battle. …show more content…
If I was there at the time, I would have given three main arguments. First, under the articles, every action Congress takes has to have the consent, approval, and cooperation of the states. The national government had little power over the states, because the Articles of Confederation left most of the powers for the states and their people. Secondly, if Congress wanted to declare war, nine of the thirteen states would have to agree. One state, big or small, would only have one vote to decide. I believe this is fair in these circumstances because that way the smaller states could not be outvoted by the larger, seemingly more powerful states. Lastly, the Congress is checked and balanced by the states and people. The states were afraid of a strong national government, because the congress might be able to control the people. To ensure their protection, they made Congress weak, with little
As Armitage states “Each of the 13 states had a vote in the weak national Congress while a vote of 9 states was required in order to pass any laws and a unanimous vote of all 13 states was required for the Articles to be amended.” This gave all of the new states extreme power to make their own laws and pass them while defanging the new central government. It could not raise an army, collect taxes, regulate trade between the states or foreign trade markets, or force states to follow laws it set. The Constituion addresses these weaknesses by declaring that the new Federal Government had enumerated powers that were explicitly listed in Article One, Section 8 of the
The articles of Confederation were drafted with an aim to succeed, but there were some allocations that were not considered. The first concern that was not considered was how powerful the federal government was supposed to be. The founding fathers knew that confederation was going to make the United States a unit, which means that decisions such as international relations, was to be controlled centrally. The congress and the executive were not given sufficient powers to engage military action. The congress had to borrow military empowerment from the states.
The Revolutionary War had ended and the colonies successfully signed a treaty of paris with England, proclaiming their independence from Britain and establishing other terms of the treaty. No longer were the colonies divided, they had now become the United States of America and consisted of states. Throughout the colonists' "road to recovery" from Britain, and their journey to becoming a successful and powerful nation, they were faced with numerous challenges including one large one - creating a country! They needed to establish a strong but restricted central government, create a set of fair rules, laws, and regulations, and elect political leaders to represent each state and the nation as a whole, thus, the Articles of Confederation
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
The Articles of Confederation (A.o.C.) were the most influential in the development of American political values beacuse they paved the way for the goverment established in modern day America. The A.o.C. did this by allowing the public to vote for representititves in Congress and Limiting the power of the central goverment. By letting the public vote, they formed a reprsenetitive goverment. This allowed the canidate who was most appeling to the public eye and who most of the people thought would do a good job to "lead" the country. However, because they limited the power of the goverment, the president was not allowed to pass a law without approvemnt by Congress.
State’s permission was needed to collect taxes which presented an issue. The major shortfall of the Articles was the basic inability to deal with the foreign policy which was presented in John Jay’s writing of 1785. Great Britain refused to vacate its outposts, like Fort Niagara, and wouldn’t leave after the war until the United States compensated the Loyalists for land taken during the war. The Confederation Congress did not have the power to do this. (Doc D).
Ratifying the Confederation Period Thanks to our victory in the Revolutionary War, America finally became an independent nation. Subsequently, we created our first official government, The Articles of Confederation. When Congress declared war on Britain in 1776, it also called out for a plan to help the states cooperate in the war effort. Franklin presented a plan of Confederation; in which Congress was given the power of planting new colonies when necessary, and implying control over the West.
This angered the larger states because they felt as though they should be worth much more than the other states, which would make sense. For example, of the about three million people in the United States in 1780, a small state such as Rhode Island or Delaware, with around fifty thousand people, could decline an amendment to the other two million people in the country. This is absurd and lead to very little actually happening due to the lack of unity in the states. The Articles of Confederation had hardly any political unity and lead the founding fathers to call the Constitutional Convention and rid the United States of the weak
During this time, the United States was millions of dollars in debt, and couldn’t find a way to compensate the money that had been borrowed. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Continental Congress was allowed to ask the states for money but, the states
In addition to this, the Articles of Confederation did not provide separation of power. The only branch of government was the legislative body, Congress. There was no president or any other authority figure to look to, nor was there a judicial branch, meaning there was no way to enforce laws. Due to this issue, Congress was not capable of making the states adhere to the Treaty of
The larger states supported the Virginia Plan in which the number of representatives was based on a state’s population (Weatherman 2). The smaller states, afraid of losing power in the new government because under that plan their number of representatives would be substantially less would not accept the Virginia Plan and instead opted for the New Jersey Plan in which each state would Stemple
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 were a document seen as the “first” constitution of the United States. This document granted the new national government power to control the military, declare war, and create treaties between the states. However, the Articles had holes in it considering the government did not have the power to tax, create laws without at least nine states’ approval, or change the Articles of Confederation without a unanimous vote. This means that the country soon fell into debt and petty arguments between state, the new government had no control. It was time for a change.
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.