The Articles Of Confederation: A Weak Central Government

The Articles of Confederation were worthless in enforcing good interstate relations because they did not give Congress the power to regulate interstate trade. This caused economic problems because under the Articles of Confederation, all the states could, and did, have their own currency, so there were many different currencies. This made interstate trade difficult. But under the Constitution, Congress has right to regulate trade between states. Commerce became easier because all the states had the same money and it was much more efficient to buy and sells things across state borders with the same currency.

How the Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation Outweigh The Strengths In 1775 The American Revolution was uncontrollable, with Britain and the colonies, at the time, going head to head fighting for control. During the chaos, the new nation acknowledged that it needed a stable government if they were going to win the war. Their leaders wrote a set of rules to help control the country in 1777. The Articles of Confederation were a set of rules to be the first document that established the functions of their national government after it declared independence.

The Articles of Confederation strengths were democratic and state dominated, and its weakness was that the federal government had no power to tax and it couldn’t unify the states constitutionally by laws. The strengths of the Articles are few. The government under the Articles of Confederation successfully waged a war for independence against Britain. Additionally, the Articles also allowed states to dominate their own states, such as taxing, regulating the trade and economy, etc. However, under the Articles of Confederation, there was no chief executive, there was no court system, there was not even a way for the central government to force the states to pay tax.

In order for the country to operate successfully, the federal government must be able to have authority to control the well-being of the nation. The Articles of Confederation hindered the central government’s ability to achieve that authority due

The Articles of Confederation didn’t do too good, which led to some issues. For example, the United States was in a debt, there were many economic problems such as currency with no value, and that British goods were being brought into the United States at a fast rate. After the Articles of Confederation failed the U.S.

“Congress didn 't have power to create tax, draft troops, stop states from printing their own money, they couldn 't make tariffs, and there was no chief executive” (Enotes Martin Murphey) those were some flaws in the Articles of Confederation, Congress had limited power making the United States weak. For those following reasons the

The Articles of Confederation was the first written constitution of the united states. It gave great power to the State governments. The states had numerous rights to run their State the way they wanted to without consent from the national government. The States were not responsible for paying taxes to the central government, which led to lack of resources for a military among other necessities.

The Articles of Confederation were created as the first official government of the United States. It was based largely on the concept of the state government having greater power than the national congress. What started out being a good thing ended up having a lot of weaknesses. One general weakness is no executive branch to enforce the acts of congress.

One of the major problems with the Articles of Confederation is that power was established state by state and limited power to a central government. The Constitution fixed this by balancing powers between the states and the Federal government. Also they created three branches of government: legislative, judiciary, and executive. Other solutions to the Articles of Confederation made by the Constitution were levying taxes by Congress, Congress having the right to control trade between states and countries, amendments became easier to ratify, and the executive branch had the power of checks and

“ 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.

By doing so, it allowed the newly free states to obtain most of the power as opposed to having a government oversee the treaties. The government was unable to conduct foreign affairs successfully. Under the Article of Confederation, congress had the power to declare war and make peace, it could coin money, but it couldn’t

First let’s give some general information behind the Articles of Confederation. It was first adopted by the Continental Congress which on November 15, 1777 became the constitution of the United States. It took till March 1, 1781 where the ratification of the Articles of Confederation by all thirteen states occurred. The effect of creating the Articles of Confederation created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government leaving the state governments with most of the power. I see many reasons why the U.S.

The Articles of Confederation was America’s first constitution and at the time it seemed like a great alternative for a government. These Articles of Confederation put the Congress at the highest power in the nation. The Congress had the power to conduct foreign affairs, maintain armed forces, borrow money, issue currency, and establish a postal system. However, the lack of power given to the Congress, to avoid too much power, made it hard to do their place in government. The Congress has no power to tax, which meant that it had to rely on the states to collect and forward taxes, which the states were reluctant to do, leaving the central government short on money.

The Articles of Confederation were very weak. One weakness of the Articles of Confederation were that Congress could not tax the colonists, “...did not give the national

The weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation were: It had insufficient power to enforce treaties, no stable currency, lack of respect from other nations, no ability to regulate trade or commerce, a blatant lack of political power, a lack of unity among the states, no power to levy taxes from the people, and the nation suffered from social unrest. In spite of its shortcomings, the Second Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation did have some notable successes. For all of its problems, it coordinated a successful war and negotiated a favorable peace treaty. The Articles of Confederation prepared the way for a better national government and left on hand agencies of government in good working order.