Articles Of Confederation Strengths And Weaknesses

The Constitution of the United States of America was framed in part by The Articles of

The Articles of Confederation served as the written article that established the parts of the nationwide government of the United States after it acknowledged freedom from Great Britain. It made a weak government that frequently, but not completely, avoided each individual state from leading their own foreign diplomacy.

The Articles of Confederation was first written in 1777. It was passed by the Confederation of Congress. Congress decided that they needed a firm government to organize the states as a whole. At least that was their primary goal. Since each state had separates rules. The Articles of Confederation was later ratified by each state in 1781. It was “America’s first federal constitution” (Keene 138). The confederation had a few strengths but many weaknesses. The nation faced many economic and political issues that lead people to controversy.

While the Articles of Confederation unified the American colonies for the first time, the individual states had a hard time allowing a central government to solely control their territory. Due to fear of an all powerful monarchy like the one they had experienced in England the colonies were wary of allowing a central government certain powers. These certain powers included control of commerce, ability to tax, and even the ability to act directly upon individual citizens of a state. While the Articles provided a loose confederation to unify the new country, they were only a temporary solution due to their obvious weaknesses in several areas. The Articles of Confederation were essentially

One of the main disadvantages of the Articles of Confederation was that it encouraged a weak central government. Because nine out of thirteen states had to agree upon a law in order for it to be established, very few laws were passed. Amendments of the Articles of Confederation were never passed because the vote had to be unanimous. Not many decisions were made and the Congress generally only had the power to make treaties, deal with foreign affairs, and declare war. The Articles of Confederation read, “Each state shall contain its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right…” (Article II) The states had the most power and the Congress very rarely made decisions that affected the internal affairs of the states or country. There was only one house of Congress where each state only had one vote. This did not allow the bigger states with a greater population to have an advantage over the smaller states, which one could perceive as unfair in certain circumstances. Also, there was no judicial branch, which meant that if a case was not solved on a state level, it had nowhere to go. Fundamentally, the states held the most power. The lack of power within the Congress led to economic crisis.

The Articles of Confederation have strengths and weakness. I am going to start with the strengths. The first strength and the important one is having thirteen colonies united under one government that make these colonies a strong country together. Another strength is given the departments a specific defined roles for various parties to run the country more effectively. The Articles of Confederation inspired the coordination and cooperation between different states, so that’s also one of the strength of the Articles of Confederation. “It allowed the Central Government to sign treaties and peace deals with other countries giving rise to a stable neighborhood. The peace treaty with England was one such deal.” (Web) Having a stable country is most important thing to have a strong new country, and to have a stable country it should be peace between the states. And that is what the Article of Confederation accomplished. Finally, the population got increased to more than 60000 as big untied country and that could increase the economy of the country too because more people means more tax.

They were a few shortcomings and advantages in the new government under the Articles of Confederation I would like to discuss. First of all the weaknesses that articles of confederation have gone through were certain people in the congress lacked leadership, could not tax, there militia or military was small, and one vote per state. The advantages they had were that they could borrow money and make peace also sign treaties. There were several sentiments and ideas. The “new vision want to make political authority legitimate and secure liberty” (Wilson, 2008, p.20). The system of government was established by articles to respect liberties given to them. Founding fathers replaced the document because certain states used the document for different

During the era or time in which the Articles of Confederation were in place, the document had a lot of weakness; maybe too many weaknesses. These weaknesses included: It had created a struggling economy, had no Judiciary, only had a legislature (Congress), no executive (President), and gave too much power to the states or the people. A weakness that the Articles had been that the people thought that the government would help with the economy. This caused a struggling economy, and that had a lot of consequences like Continental Army marching against the government for

First, the Articles of Confederation were viewed as an overall weakness. It did not allow congress to obtain really any power over the people; therefore we had a weak central government. Congress was not granted the power that they needed in order to keep things in order,“Probably the most unfortunate part of the Articles of confederation were that the central government could not prevent one state from discriminating against other states in the quest for foreign commerce.” (Ginsberg, et. al. 2014: 35). States were rebelling and our new found country was in chaos and our Congress was not able to prevent states from discriminating against other states. For example, another downfall to this document was that, “The Articles of Confederation were concerned

The Articles of Confederation were placed as a form of temporary government. However, the Articles did not address the many problems the United States was having and going to have at the time. Therefore The Articles of Confederation were one of the weakest forms of functioning governments.

During the Revolutionary War, colonists believed that they needed a sense of unified government, so this led to the creation of the Articles of Confederation, the first written constitution of the United States (history.com). Although the Articles of Confederation had its strengths, such as allowing the central government to create treaties and maintain military, it had many weaknesses, such as preventing the central government to levy taxes and regulate trade. It also could not be changed unless there was a unanimous decision and it lacked a stable currency. Since the creation of the Articles of Confederation had many issues and weaknesses, the Continental Congress rewrote the Articles into what is now known as the U.S Constitution. The Constitution established a national government, guaranteed basic rights for the colonists and revised almost everything that was wrong in the original Articles, such as the sovereignty that resided primarily in the states and the lack of power from the national government. The Constitution was later ratified by all 13 states in May 1790, with the support of the Federalist Party. [A] Federalists believed in the commitment to a strong national government and in the practice of a separation of powers. However, Anti-Federalists had the opposite view which was the opposition of a strong national government, the support for small landowners, and the representation of rights of the people. Anti-Federalists believed that a strong national government

The Articles of Confederation were the first attempt of the American people to make a national government. The Articles of Confederation served as the first constitution of the United States of America. Under the Articles of Confederation a legislative Congress was the only part of the government. Even though the legislative Congress was the only part of the government, it had no power to force states to do anything against their will. This made the government extremely weak since it was not able to force states to follow laws that were passed or pay taxes.

The Articles of Confederation, while not perfect, created a baseline that helped to form the United States of America. The Articles of Confederation gave the new nation the power to effectively produce some laws and regulations. This power led to land ordinances, which created a starting point for the development and distribution of land. The articles also established a strong power for the states, and a federal power just strong enough to hold the states together. The Articles of Confederation helped to solve some problems that challenged the new nation regarding its basic principles and structure, but it was quickly realized that it caused many problems and needed to be changed drastically.

The Articles of Confederation was the United State’s first constitution, it was written in an effort to unite the states after the American Revolution and served as a blueprint for the modern constitution. In order for the Articles to become official, they had to be approved by all thirteen colonies. Although Congress sent the Articles of Confederation to the states around the end of 1777 to become ratified, they were not officially adopted until March 1, 1781. Under these Articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. The American people feared a strong national government and as a result of this, the Articles of Confederation were specifically designed to be weak in the sense that each state maintains its own sovereignty and all rights to govern themselves, with the except of the rights exclusively granted to Congress. Since the Articles lacked many necessary components to keep a nation properly structured, they were eventually revised into the constitution we recognize today. Although, the Articles of Confederation seemed as though it only contained weaknesses, within the document, many strengths and accomplishments were made. Overall, the Articles of Confederation were proven to be both efficient and non-efficient during the time period they were in effect.

The failure of the Articles of Confederation help the founders to create a more stable government system with the Constitution. The flaws in the Articles helped them make changes that made the new system very effective. Under the Constitution, Congress had a right to levy taxes (Feldmeth). This fixed the problem of the government always running short on funds because they could only request taxes from the government. They were also able to raise an army to deal with threats, something they were not able to do under the Articles. States are more evenly represented under the Constitution instead of being