Articles Of Confederation Strengths And Weaknesses

The first codified form of government for the United States, the Articles of Confederation, provided the national government with a plethora of weaknesses and a scarce amount of strengths. Most of the weaknesses were originally desired traits for the national government and only were seen as weaknesses when actually used to govern. No nation could sustain as one with the type of federal government that the United States had under the Articles of Confederation, and without amazement it did fail rather quickly. A new document, the United States Constitution, was drafted in order to fix the errors of the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government was allotted with a small handful of strengths. Remarkably,

It failed a small, growing nation because of a misguided assumption of republican virtue, a lack of structure, and an unequal balance of power and responsibility. The framers of the Articles of Confederation assumed that republican virtue would lead to states carrying out their duties and obeying congressional duties. When the states stopped obeying their duties the national government did so as well. When states stopped paying their taxes, the national government then stopped paying their debt to the people and states. This led to Shay’s Rebellion, a rebellion that consisted of former confederate soldiers fighting to be paid for their time serving the United States during the American Revolution and to get their land back after being levied by the states. The rebellion was stopped by a hired militia, but it exposed the weaknesses of the articles and was a part of a constitution being drafted. In addition to a lack of republican virtue, a lack of structure within the government led to detrimental limitations on the government. Economic disorganization, a lack of central leadership, and legislative inefficiency led to the end of the Articles of Confederation (Brackenmyere). Efficiency and leadership are necessary factors in building a new nation, and lack of those things failed a growing nation. Lastly, an imbalance of power and responsibility ultimately could

One of the major issues addresses was taxation, and under the United States Constitution, Congress was granted the right to levy taxes, which meant that they no longer had to make taxation requests to the states and could fund their own government. In addition to new taxation practices leading to economic organization, the national government was granted the right to control interstate and foreign commerce. The national government was put in charge of defense under The Constitution and could create its own military. A central leadership position was added as well as a national judiciary to deal with issues of the states and the people. The executive and judicial branch added necessary central leadership to the nation. Legislative inefficacy was also addressed. Representation in the legislature was a polarizing topic, but eventually a bicameral legislature was created with the upper house, the Senate, giving each state two votes, and a lower house, the House of Representatives, which directly elected representatives from each state dependent upon population. This was a much needed modification over each state only having one vote. Also, super majorities were no longer present, with only fifty percent plus one votes required to pass a law and two thirds of both houses of Congress plus three-fourths of state legislatures or national convention required to