3.3: The Articles of Confederation

As far as the Americans were concerned, the Declaration of Independence severed their ties with Great Britain. That meant the 13 former colonies were now without a national government. War was looming, and they needed a new political system to replace the one they had just cast off. Otherwise, the war effort would be a disorganized mess, hopelessly outmatched by British military might.

In 1777, the Second Continental Congress, the same one that signed the Declaration of Independence, drafted the Articles of Confederation, America’s first constitution. The Articles, which went into effect in 1781 after being ratified, established a barebones national government. Congress consisted of a single chamber in which each state had between two and seven delegates but only one vote. Nine of the 13 states had to vote for a law for it to pass, and amending the Articles required the support of all 13. There was no independent executive or judiciary. Congress could (and did) elect presidents from among its members, but those presidents only wielded the limited powers Congress chose to grant them.

The Articles of Confederation enabled the Americans to fend off the British and secure their independence, but just barely. Congress tried to raise money to fund the Continental Army, but it lacked the power to collect taxes from the states to do so. The states’ reluctance to contribute left the army constantly low on supplies, forcing General George Washington himself to repeatedly beg Congress for money to feed, clothe, and arm his soldiers.

After the war, the Articles of Confederation continued to trouble the newly independent nation by failing to resolve conflicts between states. Sometimes these conflicts were territorial, with two states claiming the same piece of land and arguing over borders. Sometimes they were economic, with states owing money to other states and passing laws canceling their debts or printing worthless paper money to pay them off. The national government lacked the authority to settle these disputes. Even if Congress decided that one state was in the wrong, it had no power to enforce its decision.

The problems with the Articles were laid bare in 1786, when a Massachusetts farmer named Daniel Shays organized a debtors’ revolt. Shays, a former captain in the Continental Army, had never received his full five years’ worth of officer’s pay. Deep in debt, he led thousands of citizens to obstruct the proceedings of the Massachusetts state government, which was jailing debtors and confiscating their property. Congress tried and failed to gather enough money from the states for a military force to quash Shays’ Rebellion, which was eventually broken up by the Massachusetts state militia and a privately funded local militia.

Shays’ Rebellion forced America to reckon with the fundamental failure of the Articles of Confederation. The weak national government they had designed reflected their suspicion of centralized power, which they feared would lead to tyranny. They had good reason to be wary, but in their efforts to avoid a tyrannical government they had created an ineffectual one, powerless to resolve interstate disputes or deal with national emergencies. Shays’ Rebellion did not bring the fledgling nation crashing down, but without major reform it was only a matter of time before some other crisis would.