Articles of Confederation: Revolutionary War

Only available on StudyMode
  • Download(s) : 167
  • Published : February 21, 2013
Open Document
Text Preview
Ever since the Revolutionary war, America had become an independent country. Of course, they needed a national government to keep things in order. So then, the Articles of Confederation was created as the first attempt of a national government.In a confederation, the states, maintain their sovereignty, but they join together in a coordinated way to deal with certain issues. This independence of each political state is seen as the main advantage and main disadvantage of a confederation. Ever since the Articles of Confederation, many problems had occurred. For example, there were a lot of dept problems. Such as paying back the loans government had borrowed, and the money to keep a standing army. Also each state had only had one vote, and that each state had to agree for a law to be passed. So there wasn’t really a distribution for voting power. But in spite of all the problems, the Articles of Confederation did have some successes. In this case, it was the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance, which created territorial government. Therefore, the Articles of Confederation wasn’t that effective, but in some matter was effective in solving the problems that confronted the new nation.

One reason that the Articles of Confederation were not effective in solving the problems is that, it didn’t let the national government tax. The government can’t support the nation, if it didn’t have the ability to place taxes on imported goods. For example, there were many Americans who had fought during the war, and supplied goods to the army. They were given loan certificates which had made them wait, where soon the congress can pay them back, but they failed. The congress had owed 34 million to Americans and 10 million to foreign leaders. The little money that the congress made went to foreign leaders. But the Americans still had to wait with the certificates. To solve the problem, it was requested that there should be 5 percent tax on goods, so they can make more...
tracking img