Articles of confederation

Being a melting pot composed of a wide variety of races and ethnicities, early America required a strong tie with which to hold its unity and rally its new settlers around a common flag. The American constitution that is currently in vigor and with all its uniqueness and specialty is nothing but a final stage to several attempts introduced by prominent politicians among the settlers of the new world. The most remarkable attempt was definitely the articles of confederation which came along the course of establishing unity in America. Conceived and produced by John Dickinson in 1776, adopted in 1777 and going in vigor in 1781, the articles of confederation were a dismal failure and provided only for a very loose union. This exposé intends to shed light on some of the reasons that hindered the survival of the articles and turned them into a real fiasco.

As a start, I would like to signal that the reasons of failure had different natures. Some of them were political while the remainder got an economic aspect. On the political stage, the articles of confederation provided for a government with a unique branch namely the legislative which was incarnated by the congress. Consequently, powers overlapped and got centralized in one branch which would entail a subsequent corruption and abuse. The division of powers and the internal mechanism of check and balance that served to a large extent to the maintaining and the survival of the current American constitution, constituted one of the stark contrasts between the two documents and whose absence precipitated the failure of the articles of confederation. Besides, the articles denuded the federal government from its military role and restricted quite noticeably its prerogatives. For instance, it could by no means raise an army, nor could it wage war. Even worse, it was laid helpless with states since it could not enforce them to send their quotas of soldiers in times of war. The government played actually a tiny and negligible role in major issues. Just to state some, states had already been at that time through many conflicts over boundaries and territorial expansion. Nonetheless, the government played the role of a spectator and even if it intervenes hopefully, its decisions were hardly compulsive as they were infringed by roughly all the states.

Moving to investigating the economic reasons, we come through many of the deficiencies that the articles of confederation included. Most importantly, they didn’t assign any effective role to the government in managing the economic life mainly trade which looked remarkably out of its reach. While the government was discharged of regulating trade, setting up tariffs and levying taxes, states were fully absorbed in negotiating with foreign parts about gigantic and large scale businesses. They even rejected sometimes to contribute with their shares to its budgeting; this latter would stand as usually helpless with them. Yet, there is still another ill in the articles of confederation that would probably exacerbate the constitutional crisis in the states and stand for the emptiness and inefficiency of this legal document. Each state possessed its own monetary system and coined its proper currency which would suggest a clear cut and an illusive unity between them. Some of these states opted for inflation as a solution to boost their economies. Unfortunately, this had serious repercussions on the federal government that fell in debt and plunged into a long depression. All this would account for the animosity that arose between many states which reached its unprecedented edge when some states imposed taxes on the products coming from their neighboring ones.

The nation was close to a virtual chaos that was looming and threatening. It was heading straightly forward to a chronic crisis aggravated by the disruption of trade.

George Washington was one of those who witnessed this epoch and commented on it saying « the states were united by a rope of sand» which implies the fragility and weariness of the unity established throughout the articles of confederation

These instances of failure drove many politicians to yell with the need for quick and vital remedies and drafting an efficient and inclusive constitution replacing the already sunk articles of confederation.