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Articles Of Confederation Dbq Essay

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Hudgins After the United States won the Revolutionary War in 1783, the 13 states which were formerly the 13 colonies of Great Britain were now an independent nation. They faced a dilemma. The Articles of Confederation in many ways were not strong enough to support an organized national government. Within the newly independent nation, there were two schools of thought regarding centralized government. On one hand, the Federalists favored a Constitution which established a strong unified government at a federal level. On the other hand, the Anti-Federalists were in favor of maintaining power within the 13 state governments, and believed smaller more local governments were best (Artifact 4). They felt that passing a Constitution may lead …show more content…

For many reasons, the Articles of Confederation were failing. First was the fact that Congress did not have the power to tax. Without income from taxes, there was no way for the government to pay their bills or support a national military to protect the new nation (Article 1). In fact, many states had their own military and printed their own money. In addition, the Articles of Confederate did not support a national court system or and Executive Branch to enforce any laws passed by Congress. Federalists such as John Jay felt that without a strong central government the United States would never be taken seriously by foreign countries, and eventually would become even more divided when the various states would side with different foreign countries depending on their needs (Artifact 2). Definitely, the country’s new independence was created a need for a new form of …show more content…

Generally, those in the Anti- Federalist movement such as Melancton Smith, associated with the more common man such as the farmer and laborer, and believed that Constitution would not allow for the representation of the ordinary man (Artifact 5). The Federalist movement, on the other hand was more associated with the property owners and wealthy merchants, many from the Northern States (Artifact 7). The words of Alexander Hamilton demonstrate the Federalist closer association with the wealthy when he stated “But it would seem to me that the behavior of the wealthy is less wicked and sinful”. (Artifact

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