Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation: Governing Struggles Post-Independence

After the Americans declared themselves independent from England, they were left with the duty of deciding how they should be governed. At first, people were not comfortable with a strong centralized government as they feared it would turn into a dictatorship or another monarchy. Since the people feared a strong centralized government, they created the Articles of Confederation, which was purposely made to be a weak government. The Articles of Confederation were very limited in what they could do, and had a wide range of what they couldn’t do. The majority of what they could do was have the power to declare war, negotiate treaties, and make alliances, while also be in charge of the army. So pretty much the Articles of Confederation only had the power to determine how foreign affairs will go. They didn’t have the power to tax, and they had to ask the states for money. This meant that in order to fund the army, they had to ask the States to fund it, as only the states had the power to tax the people. This ended up being a huge problem for America as they couldn’t properly supply the army. Finally they decided a weak centralized government could not effectively support the growing United States, and they came back together at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

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