The Articles of Confederation and The Constitution

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Everyone believes that our Founding Fathers were perfect. They always had the right answer and never made any mistakes. What people don’t know is that our Founding Fathers never would have written our Constitution if they did not make a mistake. The Constitution was actually the second document written that was meant to be the “supreme law of the land”. The first document our Founding Fathers created was called the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation was a good start for a young country, but not something the Founding Fathers wanted to base the future of the country on. That is why writing the Constitution was the best decision our Founding Fathers ever made. The Articles of Confederation was approved on the 15th of November in 1777 by the Second Continental Congress. The Founding Fathers had decided that because the United States had just gained their independence from a strong central government (England), they did not want to create another government like that. The Articles of Confederation gave a lot of the power to each individual state. There was not a strong central government. Under the Articles of Confederation, the National Government did not have the power to tax citizens for military reasons, draft citizens for the military, or create a common monetary system. These were just few of many things that gave fault to the Articles of Confederation. For the time being, this did not seem like a big deal for the citizens of the new country. The Founding Fathers, though, knew something would have to eventually change for the United States to succeed in the future. The process of drafting the Constitution started on May 25th of 1787. This was roughly ten years since the Articles of Confederation was ... ... middle of paper ... ... also had an amendment section where people had the right to change something in the document. This was what got the Constitution ratified. If the Articles of Confederation was strong enough for our country, our Founding Fathers would never have proposed the Constitution to the thirteen states. The Articles were a good start for our country, but the Constitution was going to be what kept our country together for the future. In the preamble of the Constitution, it is stated, “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union…”. Nothing is perfect. Not even the Founding Fathers. They created a weak document in the Articles of Confederation. They did, however, fix their mistake by not only writing the Constitution, but convincing the states to have it ratified. The Founding Fathers turned their biggest mistake into their best decision with these two documents.

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