Articles of Confederation

A detailed Summary of Articles of Confederation

To say that from 1781 to 1789, the Articles of Confederation provided the United States with an effective government would be over-exaggerating quite a bit. To many people in the present day, an effective government is a body that can govern mass numbers of people, and still be just in their overruling decisions on matters and also keeping law and order in mind, always remembering to do things for the benefit of the common good. However, the Articles of Confederation was not written in the present day, so these principles of an effective government are not quite applicable. Instead, many people from the time period of the 1780's believed that an effective government was a body that could govern mass numbers of people, still giving the states and the people many rights, while still being able to keep control. This would eliminate any possibility that a federal government could either become too strong or could resemble a monarchy. The Articles of Confederation did very few of these things, but on the plus side for some, the Articles of Confederation did not create a strong central government. However, this was not always good, for some could be led to believe that the Articles of Confederatio

n did almost nothing for the people of the 1780's. The Articles of Confederation was simply a loose confederation of the states with no congressional power over commerce and no congressional power to levy taxes. There were no federal courts, no authority to act directly upon individuals, no power to coerce states, and there had to be unanimous approval of the states for an amendment to be put into action. Despite its flaws, the Articles of Confederation did have some positive aspects to it.

The Articles of Confederation served as a stepping stone to the United States Constitution, which was later to be written. In other words, the Articles of Confederation served as an intermediate step between the previous rule under of Britain and the later adopted Constitution. Without the idea of a lenient central rule from government which was presented in the ineffective Articles of Confederation, the people of the United States would probably never have adopted the present day Constitution. The reasoning behind this would be mostly because the Constitution includes a quite strict government rule, which the people of the 1780's were probably not quite ready for yet. Instead, many wanted a sovereignty of the states, which they received under the Articles of Confederation. However, what they did not necessarily receive was protection of their land.

Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had no power to levy taxes; thus Congress started to have no money to carry out federal tasks in addition to the national debt, such as repaying soldiers in the army. In Document C, Joseph Jones, a delegate of Virginia in 1783, had written to George Washington that they had to delay payment to soldiers for various reasons, one of them being Congress's lack of money from taxes that could not be enforced. Taxes, though hated by most Americans, were obviously a necessity in the American world, for without them, government could not quite function properly.

The Northwest Ordin

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Category: History