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Confederation and Constitution

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Confederation and Constitution
United States History
Professor: Morgan Deane
9/30/12

The Articles of Confederation were a great start to shaping and unifying our country, but it was just that, a “start”. It needed to take the country as a whole into consideration in order for it to hold this unity in place. The Articles of Confederation led to the Constitution of the United States. Although similar in some aspects, very different in others. The articles had many weaknesses that were changed in the Constitution. There were many compromises made between the states in order to effectively draft the Constitution. Roger Sherman’s Plan kept the Constitutional Convention together which was later known as the Great Compromise. The fight for the Constitution had just begun and the ratification processes needed to take place. Even with some states being in favor of the Constitution it would take time to get the nine states needed to complete this process. The states in favor would called themselves The Federalist and those opposed were called the Anti-Federalist. The Federalist set out to change the mind of the remaining states with a series of letters that were written to newspapers.
The Articles of Confederation were used as a base for the Constitution. The ideas from the Articles of Confederation were used in the writing of the Constitution. Both the Articles and the Constitution established “federal” systems of multiple sovereigns whose continued existence was constitutionally guaranteed. Despite the fact that both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution established federal systems, there were certain fundamental differences between the two systems. The Articles of Confederation gave states the power of federal government whereas the Constitution derived its authority from the whole people of the nation, not just a single state. Consenting power on the ratification of the Constitution was an issue because the Articles would let Legislatures of each state choose who would

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