How was the new constitution better than the Articles of Confederation?

It was on this day in 1777 that the Articles of Confederation, the first American constitution, was sent to the 13 states for consideration. It didn’t last a decade, for some obvious reasons.

The Articles formed a war-time confederation of states, with an extremely limited central government. The document made official some of the procedures used by the Congress to conduct business, but many of the delegates realized the Articles had limitations.

Here is a quick list of the problems that occurred, and how these issues led to our current Constitution.

1. The states didn’t act immediately. It took until February 1779 for 12 states to approve the document. Maryland held out until March 1781, after it settled a land argument with Virginia.

2. The central government was designed to be very, very weak. The Articles established “the United States of America” as a perpetual union formed to defend the states as a group, but it provided few central powers beyond that. But it didn’t have an executive official or judicial branch.

3. The Articles Congress only had one chamber and each state had one vote. This reinforced the power of the states to operate independently from the central government, even when that wasn’t in the nation’s best interests.

4. Congress needed 9 of 13 states to pass any laws. Requiring this high supermajority made it very difficult to pass any legislation that would affect all 13 states.

5. The document was practically impossible to amend. The Articles required unanimous consent to any amendment, so all 13 states would need to agree on a change. Given the rivalries between the states, that rule made the Articles impossible to adapt after the war ended with Britain in 1783.

6. The central government couldn’t collect taxes to fund its operations. The Confederation relied on the voluntary efforts of the states to send tax money to the central government. Lacking funds, the central government couldn’t maintain an effective military or back its own paper currency.

7. States were able to conduct their own foreign policies. Technically, that role fell to the central government, but the Confederation government didn’t have the physical ability to enforce that power, since it lacked domestic and international powers and standing.

8. States had their own money systems. There wasn’t a common currency in the Confederation era. The central government and the states each had separate money, which made trade between the states, and other countries, extremely difficult.

9. The Confederation government couldn’t help settle Revolutionary War-era debts. The central government and the states owed huge debts to European countries and investors. Without the power to tax, and with no power to make trade between the states and other countries viable, the United States was in an economic mess by 1787.

10. Shays’ rebellion – the final straw. A tax protest by western Massachusetts farmers in 1786 and 1787 showed the central government couldn’t put down an internal rebellion. It had to rely on a state militia sponsored by private Boston business people. With no money, the central government couldn't act to protect the "perpetual union."

These events alarmed Founders like George Washington, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton to the point where delegates from five states met at Annapolis, Maryland in September 1786 to discuss changing the Articles of Confederation.

The group included Madison, Hamilton and John Dickinson, and it recommended that a meeting of all 13 states be held the following May in Philadelphia. The Confederation Congress agreed and the Constitutional Convention of 1787 effectively ended the era of the Articles of Confederation.

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If you sit to compare the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, you will realize that even though they were drafted by the same people and that too within a span of just over a decade, there exist quite a few differences in them.

Shortest Constitution

With 4,400 words, the US Constitution is the shortest written constitution in the world. In contrast, the Constitution of India, which is the longest, has 117,369 words.

The Articles of Confederation, which was considered the first constitution of the United States of America, and the US Constitution, which acts as the supreme law in the United States today, both are poles apart. In fact, it was only because of the weaknesses of the Articles that the present-day US Constitution was drafted.

Backdrop

The Articles of Confederation or Articles was a written agreement which laid the guidelines for the functioning of the national government. It was drafted by the Continental Congress and sent to the thirteen original states for ratification in November 1777. The ratification process was important, as without it the document did not come into effect. On February 2, 1781, Maryland became the last state to ratify it, following which it was ratified by the Congress on March 1, 1781.

Within a few years of its ratification, the Articles was subjected to severe criticism by the Founding Fathers of the United States. Problems with the document existed in plenty; the biggest issue being the fact that it left the national government at the mercy of states. Eventually, it was decided that this agreement had to be revised to suit the needs of the nation as a whole. In May 1787, delegates from the thirteen states met in Philadelphia to revise the same.

The impressive list of delegates at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 featured prominent names of the American history, such as James Madison, George Washington, William Pierce, and Benjamin Franklin. During the convention, these delegates came to the conclusion that it was better to draft an entirely new constitution instead of revising the existing agreement, and thus came into existence the new US Constitution.

Articles of Confederation Vs. the US Constitution

The Articles was subjected to severe criticism as it centralized all the powers in the hands of state governments and left the national government at their mercy. That, however, was not the only point of distinction between these documents. The two differed in several contexts, including the number of votes in the Congress and the need of judiciary.

Legislature

While the Articles of Confederation had a unicameral system of governance in place in the form of the Congress, the US Constitution introduced the bicameral system, dividing the United States Congress into the Senate (upper house) and the House of Representatives (lower house).

Voting in Congress

The Articles had a provision of one vote for every single state irrespective of its size. In contrast, the US Constitution introduced the system wherein every representative or senator was given one vote.

Executive Branch

The new Constitution also made provision for establishing the executive branch of the government, something which the Articles of Confederation didn’t facilitate. Thereby, the executive, i.e., the President, was chosen by an electoral college.

Judiciary

When the Articles was the law of the land, federal courts were not in picture and all laws were enforced by state courts. The Constitution changed this by putting a federal court system in place, which was assigned the task of resolving disputes between the citizens as well as the states. So, the disputes between states were resolved by the Supreme Court instead of the Congress, which was given similar power by the Articles of Confederation.

Drafting Laws

When the Articles was the supreme law, the national government needed approval from nine of the thirteen states to pass new laws. This changed with the ratification of the new Constitution, wherein approval of more than half of the total nominees of the states was enough to pass new laws.

Amendments

In order to amend the Articles, the national government needed unanimous approval from all the thirteen states. In the case of the US Constitution, an amendment requires the approval of ⅔ of both the houses and ¾ of state legislatures. Of the 27 amendments to the US Constitution, the first 10 amendments―collectively known as the Bill of Rights―were adopted to pacify the Anti-Federalists who had some reservations about the new Constitution.

Armed Forces

The Articles of Confederation allowed states to have their own army. However, the national government was dependent on states if it was to raise an army. In contrast, the Constitution gave the federal government the right to raise an army to deal with conflict situations.

Trade and Commerce

While the Articles didn’t allow any interference on the part of the national government in trade and commerce, the US Constitution gave the federal government the right to regulate the same at the international as well as the inter-state level, i.e., between the states.

Taxes

One of the biggest problems with the Articles of Confederation was that it did not allow the national government to levy taxes on citizens, thus putting it at the mercy of states. The Constitution rectified the loophole, allowing both, the federal government and state governments to levy and collect taxes.

Canada

The Articles of Confederation also gave Canada, which was then under the British, the opportunity to join the Union as a fully sovereign state by declaring its independence and agreeing to the terms of the Articles. The Constitution, however, didn’t pursue the neighbor. Interestingly, the invitation to Canada was open until the ratification of the new Constitution.

The US Constitution was drafted as the Articles of Confederation, which preceded it, didn’t live up to the expectations. While the states were happy with the Articles, as it put them in command with the national government having no enforcing authority whatsoever, it resulted in chaos, with each state coming up with its own laws. A strong push was required to bring the state of the affairs back on the track and that came with the US Constitution, which has definitely lived up to the expectations.

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