The Articles of Confederation and Their Weaknesses

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A confederation was madea substance in which free, self-governing states structure an association to act together in territories, for example, defense. The founding fathers chose a confederacy because it would unite all of the confederate states. The nation needed to be unified as one country instead of 13 small unorganized nations. Shays rebellion proved the need to strengthen the government. Shays rebellion was a series of violent attacks on courthouse and other government properties in Massachusetts that began in 1786 and led to a full military confrontation in 1787. This war led to so many bloodshed and so many losses, that the founding fathers want to bring the nations as one. Instead of so many wars the founding fathers wanted to unite these nations instead of having war. Thats when the founding fathers created the Articles of Confederation.

The Articles of Confederation has created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments. The Articles of Confederation were not successful for many reasons. The biggest was that there was too much power to the states and not enough power to the federal government. This caused too much chaos and difficulty since every state had its own money system, own government, everything was too complicated and the entire nation was under huge debt. The central government was designed to be very weak and didnt have enough power to even collect enough taxes. The congress needed 9 out of the 13 states to pass any laws which made it very difficult to do.

One of the weakness of the Articles of Confederation is that congress had no power to coin money, therefore each state developed their own currency. This was a problem if people traveled to different states they werent able to buy anything because their currency is not the same. This created a lot of problems for traveling and buying goods. Another problem was no national court system was established to protect the rights of U.S. citizens. This was also a problem especially for freed slaves because even though they were free they still had a problems with their rights. They couldnt work and they were still treated like slaves even though they were free.

The Constitution was then created to fix the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation which gave the federal government more power but is checked and balanced between 3 branches of government. It gave federal power and right to amend the constitution when needed, gave the government power to get out of debt, raise an army and collect taxes.

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