Let's examine the contributions of Articles of Confederation to governing in America, by examining the enduring reasons for its establishment and the weakneses that led it to be replaced with a newer constitution...
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
The first article of the Articles of Confederation (1777) is only one line,
giving the corporate name of the newly formed union: "The Style of this
confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" In 1776, Americans
were very familiar with the idea of a centralized government, for they were
familiar with the British government, and even experienced with attempts to
create a colonial union within America. Such attempts failed quickly, because
Americans did not want any more limitations on their power from an American
legislature any more than they wanted any from Great Britain. The simple aforementioned
line from the Articles of Confederation, Article I, outlines the fundamental
premise for its creation - to establish a confederacy - in which states maintain
sovereignty and the power to manage their own affairs. The only purpose for
the union between the states was "for their common defence, the security
of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare." (Articles of
Confederation, Article III) The Articles of Confederation set the basic structure
of American Government.
Although the Articles of Confederation formed a union of the states, it was
difficult to describe where the different governing powers lied. Regulating
financial and foreign affairs would be ineffective under such a decentralized
government. Every significant decision or initiative of the government required
unanimous agreement of the states. After the ratification of the Articles of
Confederation, there were many attempts to amend them in a way as to strengthen
the central government (Jensen, 1940). Many Americans did not believe that ordinary
men could govern themselves without restraint. Some important leaders of the
18th century thought that the democracy that came as a result of the American
Revolution was evil. There needed to be a strong central government capable
of enforcing regulations and limiting the actions of the people.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
The Articles of Confederation made the most contribution to modern governing
by the impact of the political ideas and attitudes that the creators made very
succinct in its creation. Some argue that the Articles of Confederation was
a constitutional expression of the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence (Jensen, 1940), and that the Articles of Confederation was the closest to a
democratic form of government ever created in the United States. Such ideas
and attitudes were able to stay in the United States because the changes since
the ratification of the Articles compelling our nation to adopt new constitutions
were not in the ideas and attitudes themselves but rather in the balance of
political power (Jensen, 1940).
Perhaps the most obvious of the political ideas and attitudes that Articles
of Confederation emphasized was the power that the Articles gave to the states:
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated
to the United States, in Congress assembled. (Article II) Even today, "states'
rights" and "decentralization" are matters that conservatives
continue to push. The idea of rights reserved to the states is even integrated
into the modern Constitution of the United States of America, in the tenth amendment.
The Articles also brought forth some significant political issues in the history
of the United States. An example of this is representation. Under the Articles
of Confederation, each state received one vote, regardless of size. This created
such disagreement that the Great Compromise was created: a bicameral legislature
consisting of an upper house, the Senate, with two votes per state, and a lower
house, the House of Representatives, with votes based on population.
The trial and tribulation that proponents went through in attempting to amend
the Articles of Confederation by getting unanimous votes from the states made
the writers of the constitution realize the need to simplify the ability to
amend the constitution in Article V. Under Article V, a vote of two-thirds of
both houses of congress and three-quarters of the state legislatures could be
used to add amendments to the Constitution (Feldmeth, 1998, 2). The ability
to amend the constitution using a national convention was retained, due to its
success in allowing the revision of the Articles of Confederation.
WEAKNESSES OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
The Second Continental Congress was quite successful in limiting the power
of the government. It was so successful that they essentially created a government
with insufficient power to govern effectively. Without the power to do anything,
Congress was unable to respond to national and international political problems.
Unlike today, there was no judicial branch under the confederacy, so the government
had virtually no control over legal issues, so they had to be resolved at the
state level. But what happens when a criminal crosses over a state boundary
- or a national boundary? This is only one of the major inadequacies of the
Articles of Confederation.
Because the government is severely weakened by the Articles of Confederation,
Congress also had no power to collect taxes without explicit agreement of all
of the states, and could not regulate trade, both foreign and domestic. "Congress
could only supplicate, it could not enforce …such a government could not
operate successfully for any length of time." (Warren, 1947)
Congress had so little power that it could not even enforce treaties such as
the Treaty of 1783, which was embarrassing because states started to have their
own treaties with foreign countries. Britain was "refusing to negotiate
with Congress, since it could not bind the individual states." (Bonwick,
1991) The inability to manage and regulate trade, and the lack of power to tax
made it impossible to defend the borders of the nation from British and Spanish
encroachment. The weakness of the United States had become apparent to foreign
countries.
WHY THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS SUPERIOR
Aside from the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, there are a few
advantages of the modern, more centralized system of government that come to
benefit the individual citizen. Perhaps a centralized government goes against
the idea of true democracy - perhaps states should be given more rights and
the government should be less involved. However, it is apparent that the Articles
of Confederation does not provide a viable form of government. Even with a more
centralized government, the modern government employs many techniques to prevent
the corruption of the democracy, such as horizontal division powers between
the legislative and the two branches that were not present in the Articles of
Confederation, the executive and judicial branches. In addition to the separation
of powers, the government also has a system of checks and balances, to ensure
that these powers are balanced. There is a vertical division of powers, otherwise
known as federalism, where there are different levels of government, from the
federal level all the way to district and county level, to ensure that every
administrational layer has adequate competencies and a say in the affairs in
the levels on top of it.
CONCULUSION
Regardless of the fact that the Articles of Confederation failed, and the
fact that they were weak, the enduring causes that caused its creation in 1777 and causes for its eventual failure still had a profound impact on governing
in America by compelling it to replace it with a more superior form of government
in the Constitution of the United States of America. Some of the impact of the
Articles of Confederation was obvious - the idea of state retention of rights.
However, some of the impact was on a larger scale - as stated in the first article
of the Articles of Confederation, it created the idea of a United States
of America.
PRIMARY REFERENCES
The Articles of Confederation
The Constitution of the United States of America
SECONDARY REFERENCES
Bonwick C. (1991). The American Revolution. London, England: Macmillian
Feldmeth, G. (1998). Articles of Confederation vs. the Constitution. (online)
Available: http://home.earthlink.net/~gfeldmeth/USHistory.html. (May 12, 1998)
Jensen, M. (1940). The Articles of Confederation: An interpretation of the
social-constitutional history of the American Revolution 1774-1781. Madison,
WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Jensen, M. (1964). The Making of the American Constitution. Princeton, NJ:
D. Van Nostrand Company.
Warren, C. (1947). The Making of the Constitution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press