How Did The Article Of Confederation Have A Strong Central Government

At this time, Congress had delegated powers which gave them specific powers that were extremely limited. Such limitations have Congress no power to tax or any power over interstate or foreign commerce. The Articles of Confederation also said that only the states were sovereign. This meant that only state governments had a direct impact on the people. Also, under this governing document congress consisted of one body and each state had a single vote.

Shays Rebellion served as the final nail in the coffin for the Articles of Confederation. Although the Articles of Confederation was America's first national document, it came with many weaknesses. One of the major weaknesses was that the federal government was too weak and therefore could not enforce laws. The Continental Congress borrowed money to fight in both the Revolutionary War and the French and Indian War therefore were in debt.

The Articles of Confederation were the first document created after the American Revolution. The Articles of Confederation were problematic for the nation because they gave to much power to the states. For instance, the articles did not include a central banking system, no executive, legislative, nor judicial branch of federal government. Therefore, the power of the country resided in the states, and this lead to an ambiguous nation with no stability. For example, some states were creating their own money and negotiated deals with other countries that did not include all the other states.

Therefore, Congress could not earn any money through all the international trade nor could they regulate the trade. Because of this, all of the states had the ability to trade with whomever they wanted and were not taxed or restricted. Furthermore, since Congress was unable to enforce treaties, other countries had no desire to create treaties with America because the treaties would never be fulfilled. As the Articles of Confederation limited the central government’s

After the American Revolution, the colonies needed to reconstruct a new, fresh government. America, however, was extremely restrictive with giving the central government any forms of power after the hardships the colonies faced being under the British government and Parliament. The colonies did not want to undergo another period of unfair taxation and regulated systems. Thus, America’s first government, The Articles of Confederation, gave the central government immensely few granted powers. After an eight year period, the majority of America knew that they needed a new form of government.

Under Article II of the Articles of Confederation, “each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right….” As a direct result, the states had retained too much power relative to the national government. The Congress had no money and could not seem to raise any, given the requirements that all thirteen states had to agree on tax. The outcome of the individual states having the power to tax was the government did not make any money. These ascendancies had been left to the states under the Articles of Confederation, causing the national economy to fall apart.

The Articles of Confederation created a confederation in the United States. A confederation is a government in which the state government, not national, has dominant power. The leaders of the new nation feared that a strong, centralized government would lead to tyrannical monarchy like the British government. So the Founding Fathers established a confederation where there was no president nor Supreme court, and a Congress with limited power. But the existence of a weak congress led to an ineffective national government.

This lead to the exclusion of taxation powers in the federal government, meaning they had very little money to pay their large debt from the war, pay the soldiers for their service, or even just run the government. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress was only able to simply request money from the states, of course the states rarely met these requests, which left the federal government with very little money and very little power overall. After the American Revolutionary War, the United States had a large debt to many different countries and was now unable to pay it off because it raised virtually no money under the Articles of Confederation. Also, the states and Congress shared the right to coin money and regulate said money. Currency was overprinted and created an economic crisis due to the inflation caused from the shared power of printing the currency.

As it applies to the Articles of Confederation there were many weaknesses in the way it went about governing the United States. For one, the loose federation of the states was too weak to act as a foundation to be considered or act as a central government. In addition the state legislatures had too much power and in turn had the ability to influence economic issues of all kinds. This strong legislature is the same one that allowed for mob ruling and actions by debtors. The Articles of confederation were also weak because the required congress to have all 13 colonies in agreement when a new tax was to be passed.

Because it had no power to control states, the Articles of Confederation were weak. The government had no money and no power to raise revenue. “Congress had no power to tax. All Congress could do was ask states to pay certain amounts to support the costs of the national government.” (98) This meant that congress could not fund war efforts or pay soldiers to fight in the American Revolution.

The document known as the Articles of Confederation was a failure as the first government for America. The Articles of Confederation were a Failure for the first government of America because congress commanded little respect and no support from state governments which meant they didn't care what other people had to say. Also they were very anxious to maintain their power. That meant that they wanted to keep their power because if they didn't have it they knew they would just be any other person.

“ Given their fears of strong governmental and hostility to taxation ,the Articles of confederation, also known as the weak constitution that was created by Confederation Congress, did not empower the new central government to tax Americans.” ( Keene, Cornell & 0’Connor, 2013) Due to this, the government of the United States was faced with financial problems, created by shortages of funds. In addition to funding issues, there were many other problems that plagued the Confederation. One being that it lacked a federal court system. The Articles of Confederation had no provision to regulate interstate trade and no executives with power.

Following the Revolutionary War, America had just gained independance from Great Britain and needed to form a new government. The Articles of Confederation were established as an attempt to create a government that was unlike Britain’s. Unfortunately, the Articles of Confederation had several weaknesses. When in the process of repairing those weaknesses, the Federalists and the Anti-federalists formed. The Articles of Confederation were very weak as well as useless to America and because of this, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists could not agree on a new type of government.

The Articles of Confederation were a document seen as the “first” constitution of the United States. This document granted the new national government power to control the military, declare war, and create treaties between the states. However, the Articles had holes in it considering the government did not have the power to tax, create laws without at least nine states’ approval, or change the Articles of Confederation without a unanimous vote. This means that the country soon fell into debt and petty arguments between state, the new government had no control. It was time for a change.

The first government of the united states was based on the articles of confederation and that was eventually adopted during the revolutionary war. The major flaw of the articles of confederation was the lack of strong national government. Which was the cause of economic disorganization, lack of central leadership, and legislative inefficiencies. The economic disorganization was exposed due to that congress could not regulate trade because of limited power that congress had. Not only did congress have limited power, but also the economic disorganization had no uniform system of currency.