Articles of Confederation

The articles of Confederation were originally created to be the new country’s, the United States, form of government.   However, they ended up simply being an example of what the new country could improve upon.   Since they were so new in government and to running a country, the delegates did not exactly make the best or strongest government.   So, later they had a convention and after much argument, settled on the form of government that still exists today: the constitution.   The delegates of the constitutional convention knew that the articles of confederation weren’t working correctly, so to replace it, they needed a new structure, one with increased power for the central government so that the government would actually be able to control the individual states, a way for the central government to be able to tax, and more force that could keep the states from separating into 13 different countries.
According to Edmund Morgan’s “A Critical Period” the Articles of Confederation did not do a good enough job of giving sufficient power to the central government compared to the different state governments.   The states were each able to decide their own currency, who they traded with, what they would tax, and how they could run their own state government.   The central government had no way of controlling all of the states because the Articles of Confederation gave most of the power to the states, rather than the central government for fear of the central government becoming too strong so that each state was essentially its own country.   If they had not finally truly united under the constitution, they would continue to be vulnerable to the many stronger and older countries that were just watching and waiting for this brand new country to break so that they may claim the land if the government were to fail so that there would be 13 different and weak countries.   So, with the Articles not giving enough power to the central government, having no way for the central...