Notes

1776ConfederationThe Articles of Confederation was written in andfinally ratified, or approved, by the original thirteen states in1781.Maryland was the last state to ratify the document in 1781. The confederation was the first government of the newly formed United States.A confederation is a government system where power is located with the independent states and there is little power in the central government.The desire fora confederation came from the colonists’ experience under King George III from England. They wanted to create a system that wouldn’t allow for unfair taxing or limiting individual rights. Under the Articles of Confederation, most power was with the states. Thearticles stated that each colony was to act as an independent state, and that each state had the right to pass laws within their borders. Thearticlesalso established a weak national legislature to oversee interactions between the states.Under the Articles of Confederation, states maintainedtheir freedom and independence. As a result, states functioned in many ways as independent countries. For example, several states negotiated their own trade agreements with other countries, while other states established their own militaries. With the states having the majority of government power, the central government had no control over the states’ actions and people began to fear that this system of government was not working because the national government was too weak. The Congress did not have the power to tax, so it could not pay for the army and navy needed to defend the nation. It also couldn’t regulate the trade agreements states were making with other countries. The Congress could also not enforce any laws they passed because there was no central leadership to make sure that laws were being enforced in each state or a central judicial system to interpret laws or settle disputes between states. Finally, if any changes were to be made to the Articles of Confederation, unanimous approval from all 13 states was required. This made it difficult to make any changes to the articles. As a result,the lack of powers held by the weak national Congress combinedwith each state’s independentactions, raised concerns that the Articles of Confederationwere not designed in a way to protect the new nation.By 1786 the economy of the United States was struggling due to debt, or money owed, from the Revolutionary War and because states were arguing over boundary lines and taxes.This economic situation impacted individual states and also individual citizens, especially farmers and merchants. These circumstances led to Shays’s Rebellion, a revolt by2,000 western Massachusetts farmers who marched on county courthouses to prevent land foreclosures. A foreclosure is when a bank or other entity takes back property when taxes or debts are not paid. The farmers’ land was threatened with foreclosure because they were promised that they did not have to pay taxes and otherdebts on their landduring the Revolutionary War. These promises were not kept and this led the farmers to revolt. Congress didnot respond because it was too weak and did not have its own army. TheMassachusetts militia finally ended the rebellion, but the situation made it clear that the national government did not have the ability to maintain order in this new nation. After Shays’s Rebellion, Alexander Hamilton of New York organizeda meeting in Philadelphia in 1787. Thismeeting, called the Constitutional Convention, would eventually throw out the Articles of Confederation and draft the Constitution.The freedom that the American Revolution sought to preserve proved to create a government under the Articles of Confederation that could not keep law and order. However, the experience with the Articles of Confederation led to the writing of the Constitution in 1787. Adapted