Events that led to the belief that the Articles weren’t working well was that they had a very frail government. It took about four years for the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. To approve the Article of Confederation, all 13 states had to sign off on it. Can you imagine trying to get everybody to concur on something. Now scale that up to the entire Country there’s a weakness right away.
The Articles of Confederation were in national debt. The United States owed money to France, Holland, Spain, and their soldiers. “Whatever the achievements of the Confederation government, in the eyes of many influential Americans they were outweighed by its failings. Both the national government and the Country at large faced worsening economic problems. To finance the War of Independence, Congress had borrowed large sums of money by selling interest-bearing bonds and paying soldiers and suppliers in notes to be redeemed in the future. Lacking a secure source of revenue, it found itself unable to pay either interest or the debts themselves” (pg.514).
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Congress could not regulate trade. Either foreign trade or interstate trade between two states. New York was charging Connecticut New Jersey a ton of taxes to ship goods in and out of New Harbor. New York was charging them a very high tax amount. So they got very angry that they planned an armed attack on New York. Which is a clear indication of how powerless congress was to either stop this taxing or regulate any type of trade and it led to fights and bickering among the states. And also between the United States and other nations.
There was no executive branch to enforce laws The executive branch executes our laws. The nation did not have a CEO. No system for law enforcement. There was no person to represent that state as a whole as a country there's no leader. We also don’t have a court system. There’s no national court system. And no ways to solve issues between states. States acted as individual countries and seldom agreed. Connecticut and Virginia also went to war over land claims. One vote for each, regardless of size. This meant that road Island with not a very high population had the same amount of power as a state like New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts which had a really large population back then. This angered the large States to some degree and it made the small states happy. It made congress very ineffective.
Congress could rarely pass any laws. Congress had one house law that was difficult to pass because it needed the approval of nine of thirteen states. That’s a very difficult number to attain. It meant that laws were rarely passed and although Congress didn’t have much power the powers they had were virtually ineffective because they couldn’t pass laws.
There was no common currency. Americans carried money from the federal government and forgien nations.
The idea of amendments changes to the Article of Confederation could only happen if all 13 States agreed which would be impossible. If you think about it today if we can get 50 states to agree on something that would be astonishing. Getting 13 states to agree back then was hard so it guaranteed that amendments weren’t going to be added in this document it was not going to change. When you add these issues together you have a very delicate national government. Powerful states that argue with each other. In the end, this inquiry of the government fails.
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Causes of Articles of Confederation Failure.
(2022, September 01). Edubirdie. Retrieved November 21, 2024, from https://edubirdie.com/examples/events-that-led-to-the-belief-that-the-articles-of-confederation-did-not-work-well/
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Causes of Articles of Confederation Failure [Internet]. Edubirdie.
2022 Sept 01 [cited 2024 Nov 21].
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