The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the American colonists after the Revolutionary War in order to establish a government that was more effective than their previous political control by the British Crown. It was approved by the 13 states of the USA during the Second Continental Congress in November of 1777. After being ratified by every single state, the Articles set out to maintain the self-determination of the new US government. The Articles of Confederation strengthened the U.S. government compared to before the War and gave the citizens more freedom than ever before. However, the articles led to the foundation of a very weak central government that allocated too much power in the states and was extremely inefficient legislatively. Therefore, the Articles of Confederation were not very effective in ruling the new independent nation of America and led to the development of a new form of legislation in the form of the Constitution.
One of the main goals of the Articles of Confederation was to prevent the accumulation of too much power by the central government. This was accomplished by giving the states a lot of authority – each state was almost their own country with other states being mere alliances rather than all the states forming a large union. Because of this lack of centralization, many states came up with their own legislation and economic controls that often conflicted with the surrounding states. In fact, many states would often issue their own currency that could not be used in other states – this led to massive inflation rates that brought down the economy of every state and in turn the entire country. Moreover, the notion of independent states left no room for nationalistic tendencies which prevented the buildup of both civic virtue and trust between members of all parts of the union. Furthermore, the central government did not have any ability to impose any laws on the states due to the lack of a formidable executive branch. The congress was given no financial aid and thus could not enforce any of the legislation that it made. Another main flaw with the power distribution in the new government was the inability of the national government to collect a national military. The government had the power to maintain the national army but could not make the various states provide troops or funding for the army. Ironically, the national government had the ability to declare war but could not commission the armed forces. Therefore, the government had the inability to defend the Americans from other international threats and this was demonstrated by the Britain’s continuous breaking of the agreement of the Treaty of Paris after the Revolutionary War. The British would often encroach on the American’s fishing rights and the British navy would often force American Sailors into enlistment into their army. However, America could not do anything about this violation of the Treaty of Paris due to the lack of a military. Another example was the internal revolution of Shay’s rebellion caused due to the economic downturn after the war – again, the centralized government could only sit back and watch due to their lack of armed forces. Therefore, the excess concentration of power at the state level rather than at the national level made the Articles of Confederation extremely inefficient and called for reform in the new Constitution that both had an executive branch and the ability raise an army to protect the country’s sovereignty.
The inability of the federal government to pass legislation under the Articles of Confederation also made the Articles uneffective in governing the new state. The Articles were set up in a manner so that there was no proportionality in the voting system which made the voting inherently unfair and biased towards smaller sized states. All states had exactly one vote no matter the size of the population in the state it self. This allowed states with extremely small states like Delaware to have the same influence as states with extremely large populations such as Virginia, which had 10 times the population of the average state in 1780. Because each state had the same weigh in Congress, the passing of legislation was biased towards smaller sizes states and made the passing of bills and statutes unjust and prejudiced. Furthermore, the passing of legislation required the approval of nine of thirteen states or in other words, only required the vote of five states to block a bill. Therefore, a very small percentage of the American population could prevent the passing of statutes and regulation that would benefit the large majority of the country – causing the passing of legislation during the Articles of Confederation to almost never occur. Lastly, it was terribly difficult to amend the broken nature of the Articles of the Confederation in the first place. In order to amend the Articles, the consent was needed of Congress and of every single state. This almost guaranteed that an amendment that changes would pass due to the necessity of an unanimous vote. Therefore, the Articles of Confederation were written so terribly that there were no procedures to mend their brokenness. This is contrasted with the new form of government called for by the Constitution after the scrapping of the Articles of Confederation – the Constitution can be amended by a ⅔ majority vote in the House of Representatives and Senate. Thus, the legislative inefficiency of the Articles of Confederation caused it to be extremely ineffective in governing the new nation and eventually led to the process of accepting the new Constitution.
The Articles of Confederation provided a positive break in the history of America – they emphasized personal freedoms and marked a break from the autocracy that was the British crown. However, their many flaws, including legislative inefficiency and the abundance of power handed to the individual states, made the articles ineffective in governing the new nation. These glaring errors were eventually corrected in the ratification of the US constitution in 1788.