After the Revolutionary War, the people of America wanted a system different from that of Britain; it was then that the founding fathers came up with the Articles of Confederation. By allowing individual states to be individual actors, they organized a system that placed sovereign power in the hands of the states. However, this loose organization turned out to be a failure. The lack of a strong national government led to economic disorganization, a lack of central leadership, and legislative deficiencies.
The first agent of failure was economic disorganization. The fight for independence put America into great debt, which they were struggling to pay by the late 1780s. One of the major flaws of the Articles of Confederation was that the Congress could not fully regulate trade; in an excerpt from the letter James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, in which he detailed the economic problems caused by disorganization and competition between states, he said: “The States are every day giving proofs that separate regulations are more likely to set them by the ears than to attain the common object…”. The Congress didn’t have enough power to regulate trade, and since each state had its own agenda it made it difficult to form an economic coordination amongst the states. Furthermore, there was also a problem with the currency as there was no singular system of currency, as stated in Article IX of the Articles of Confederation, which made it difficult to trade between states and with foreign entities. Lastly, taxation could only be made by the states, as stated in Article VIII, there were also times when the states would not pay or delay the amount they were supposed to deliver; this made it a challenge to pay America’s foreign debts, or manage foreign affairs. In conclusion, all these circumstances brought America close to the edge of an economic collapse.
Even so, economic disorganization wasn’t the only issue that set America into a tough situation. The lack of central leadership, as said before, gave states too much power. In Article IV, it's said that “Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State.”; which means there was no system of courts in the jurisdiction of the national government. This led to states simply ignoring laws since there were no real consequences behind them. In addition, there was also no figure of power, therefore no one to represent America diplomatically, which made it difficult to tackle foreign affairs. In the situation a body of government needed to deal with war, they could declare it, but couldn’t commission an armed force; “The United States in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining peace and war.”. Since the Congress could only rely on state militia, several problems arose, as Britain began to break the agreement of the Treaty of Paris (1783), and by 1784 the British were infringing upon American fishing rights. There was also the ineffectiveness of the Congress in putting down Shays's Rebellion, which was a direct result of the lack of a capable national army. The rebellion was a result of America’s post-war economic depression and harsh policies in response to the economic downturn. Finally, this lack of central leadership delivered several blows to America’s government structure and made them a weak new republic in a world of strong imperialist monarchies.
Moreover, issues also lay in legislative inefficiencies. Article V, said that: “each State shall have one vote.”, which means that it doesn't matter the population, for example, Virginia had over ten times the number of citizens as Delaware, but it only received one vote in Congress. Consequently, this made states with larger populations unhappy. This issue was detrimental when passing laws since it took the consent of nine of the thirteen states to approve the legislation. States with smaller populations could block any piece of legislation even though they were smaller than their counterparts. Bills that could interest the majority of people were harder to pass because of a small percentage of the American populace. Also, regarding the amendment process, Article XIII prohibited “any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed in a Congress of the United States, and be afterward confirmed by the legislatures of every State.”, that is, any amendment had to have the consent of the national Congress and all of the states, which made it extremely difficult to pass changes. Overall, this proved that legislating under this framework was inefficient.
In conclusion, there were many problems the Congress had to face financially, as in trade, currency, and taxation; also the lack of central leadership which lead to no independent judiciary, no foreign affairs head, and finally the inability to deal with internal and external threats; and in conclusion, legislative inefficiencies, such as each state had one vote, difficulty passing laws and impractical amendment process. That was the reason that after a while Alexander Hamilton, put forward the Philadelphia convention to amend the Article of Confederation, which instead became a new framework for national government, the United States Constitution