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Articles Of Confederation Dbq

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The Articles of Confederation was drafted and adopted in 1777, but not officially ratified until 1781, after the delegates at the Second Continental Congress granted that a brand new government was needed to rule the now-independent colonies. The main purpose of making the Articles of Confederation is to restrict the powers of the central government, which was based in a congress. Under these Articles, the three individual states have a lot of dependence and power. Each of these states only has one single vote in the congress. In most of the situation, majority rule makes all the decisions. Those states have the rights to levy taxes, regulate commerce and recruit their own military, while the central government has almost no military power …show more content…

It’s very difficult for Congress to pass laws since there’s a rule provide that 9 of the 13 states had to agree before any laws could be passed. Plus, there was no president or any executive branch, the percentage to make sure that laws passed by Congress were carried out was extremely low. Besides, the fact that there were no courts to interpret laws or to judge those that broke them because a national court system did not exist also made the situation embarrassing. What made matters worse was that changing the Articles of Confederation was nearly impossible because a unanimous vote of all 13 states were required before any changes could be made. In the system under the Articles of Confederation, no state would be willing to give away their sovereign power to the central government, and they even discriminated and against each other. Those conflicts are utilized by European countries. In the textbook, there’s an example about what British government did when negotiated with America. During the winter of 1786-87, when John Adams of Massachusetts was sent to negotiate a new treaty with the British. The British government responded that, because the United States under the Articles of Confederation wasn’t able to enforce existing treaties, they would negotiate with each of the 13 states …show more content…

Each state regulated its own trade, which resulted in lots of disputes among the states and with other nations. Additionally, most states issued their own money. Trading was difficult without a unified national currency,.

Each state was like a small, separated nation. The people of each state regarded themselves as citizens of their states instead of citizens of an entire nation. The reason why people felt this way was because of the great distances between states and the original transportation conditions during that time. In other word, the nation was un-united as a group of states. Most of the times, the states refused to submit to the law of Congress. As time passed, the relationship between each states and the Congress got worse.

The Articles of Confederation helped establish a new nation, but it also had failed in plenty of ways. The main problem was that the states didn’t give the national government enough power to work correctly. National government didn’t have the ability to solve all of the issues mentioned in the previous paragraphs. As a result, in 1787, Congress asked the states to send delegates to a meeting in Philadelphia discussing what could be done to improve the national

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