Compromises and the Articles of Confederation

The Articles of Confederation caused many problems for our founding fathers. There were many important factors that were abandoned in order to run a functional nation. Some of the problems were: no federal army, no national currency, the federal government could not tax, there were no centralized courts for interstate crimes, and it was extremely difficult to pass a law and almost impossible to pass an amendment. Lucky for us our founding fathers met in Philadelphia and discussed how they can approve on the Confederation. Eventually they came up with the Constitution of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Before the Constitution was created there was a lot of arguing and compromising done. Without compromise it would be impossible to create the Constitution. The first problem that had to be solved to create the new government was to have a federal army. The larger problem with that was the federal government had no power and the states had all the power. Each state had their own small military or militia. One of the huge turning points for the decision of having a federal army was Shays’ Rebellion where farmers in Massachusetts got fed up with the taxes handed down by their state and formed a mob (A1 Pg. 164). The mob went on for several hours before the Massachusetts militia put them down. After this incident congressmen decided that a strong federal government was necessary for rebellion and international treats as well. The reason that many states did not want a federal army was because they did not want a strong federal government and they believed that by giving them an army it gave them more power. Another major problem with the Article was there was no national currency. Each state had coined their own money and each states coins were worth different value. In many cases store and traders would not take money from a different state. This was a huge problem for many reasons. After the war we had a huge debt to France because they had given us a ton of