ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

The Articles of Confederation comprised the governing document that was the forerunner to the Constitution of the United States (1789). Drafted by the Second Continental Congress at York, Pennsylvania, on November 15, 1777, the Articles of Confederation went into effect on March 1, 1781, when the last state (Maryland) ratified the document.

The Articles provided the original thirteen states (Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia) with more power than the central government. Each state was given sovereignty and one vote in Congress. Congress, unable to levy taxes, had to rely on the states to do so. It was also left to the states to carry out the acts of Congress, whose powers were limited to declaring war and peace, managing foreign relations, commanding the military (an army and a navy), and issuing and borrowing money. But Congress had no authority to regulate commerce and each state was free to set up its own taxes, tariffs, and trade policies.

The inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation became clear in the first few years after they went into effect. In particular, as the post-war economy suffered a depression, the non-payment of farm mortgages and of taxes led to courts seizing the property of their citizens. This enraged the farming population, many of whom were veterans of the American Revolution (1775–1783). Many of these hard pressed farmers decided that the present government was no better than the British had been.

The most significant manifestation of this discontent was Shay's Rebellion (1786–1787). Daniel Shays, who had been a captain in the Continental Army, led a band of several thousand disgruntled farmers throughout western Massachusetts stopping the courts from seizing land for non-payment of taxes. The money to put down the rebellion had to be loaned to the Continental Congress by Boston bankers. This crisis convinced many of the political leaders of the new nation to conclude that the Articles of Confederation had to be revised. Once the process of revision was underway, the entire document was replaced by the Constitution.

James Madison (1751–1736) was among those who realized that the Articles made for a weak national government. He and others such as Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) led the movement to change that orientation even at the expense of the states. Eventually, Hamilton and Madison won the backing of the other leaders like George Washington (1732–1799), John Jay (1745–1829), and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1836). Thus, political consensus among the political elite of the new nation led to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention (1787), where the U.S. Constitution was drawn up.

One lasting provision of the Articles of Confederation was the Ordinance of 1787. Adopted early in the era of westward expansion, the ordinance established guidelines for how the nation could enlarge itself. Un-surveyed wilderness would eventually attract settlers. A legislature would be elected as soon as the population included five thousand voting citizens (men only) and the territory would be eligible for statehood once its population had reached sixty thousand.