Strengths And Weaknesses Of The Articles Of Confederation

Matthew Williams
HIS 3 Paper #1 Throwing off the British monarchy on July 4, 1776, left the United States with no central government. It had to design and install a new government and quickly. As early as May 1776, Congress advised each of the colonies to draw up plans for state government; by 1780, all thirteen states had adopted written constitutions. In June 1776, the Continental Congress began to work on a plan for a central government. It took five years for it to be approved, first by members of Congress and then by the states. This first attempt at a constitution for the United States was called the Articles of Confederation.
The Articles of Confederation was an agreement among the newly formed founding states that helped recognize
The American Revolution cost us a lot of money and since Congress couldn’t impose taxes on the states they didn’t have the means to pay back the loans they accumulated during the war. Another weakness in the Articles of Confederation was Congress did not have the power to regulate foreign and interstate commerce. Due to this states became divided from one another. This lead to competition for trade between the states. Despite its limited power, the Articles of Confederation have recorded some major achievements. Maybe the most important success was the formation of policies that helped develop the western land. This was possible thanks to the Treaty of Paris, Northwest Ordinance, and the Land Ordinance of 1785. For the Treaty of Paris, Britain had to surrender control of the region known as the Northwest Territory. No other government has ever been able to take this large territory that stretched from the Appalachian Mountains west to the Ohio and Mississippi River. In order to regulate these new western lands the Northwest Ordinance was formed. This declared that the region would be divided into three to five territories. Lastly the Land Ordinance of 1785 was created to setup a system of surveying and dividing land into new territories. After surveying, the land would be divided into 36 square mile townships.
I believe that the Northwest Ordinance was the most significant
The second was the Three-Fifth Compromise which counted each slave as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of both taxation and representation, and the agreement to have a unitary executive rather than a committee. The most significant compromise made during the Constitutional Convention was the Great Compromise was that it set up a lower house and an upper house. It also helped set up a solid structure of government.
James Madison defines factions as a group of people united by a common interest. Madison thinks the cause of factions were unequal distribution of property. Madison felt that factions would lead to tyranny by the majority. He said there are two ways to eliminate the negative effects of a faction; first being to eliminate common interest which is impossible, the second being to increase the republic so majority factions cant be formed so easily.
Madison was also concerned that certain rights were needed to protect the minority from the self-interests of the majority. Madison contended that this Constitution would remedy this by enforcing the Electoral College instead of the popular vote. The Electoral College gave some weighted influence on the smaller