The Articles of Confederation were the first constitution of the United States, drafted by the Continental Congress in 1777 and ratified by all thirteen states in 1781. This summary of the Articles of Confederation covers what the document created, what powers it gave and withheld, and why it lasted only eight years before the Constitution replaced it in 1789. The short version: the Articles built a national government on purpose weak, because states that had just fought a war against a distant central authority were not about to build another one. That choice let the union survive the Revolution and then made it nearly impossible to govern afterward.
What the Articles Created
The entire national government under the Articles was a single body called the Confederation Congress. There was no president in any modern sense, no separate executive branch, and no permanent national court system. Congress elected one of its own members annually as President of Congress to preside over debates, but the role carried no real executive power. It functioned more like a meeting chair than a head of state.1Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Presidents of the Continental and Confederation Congresses
Congress could set up special courts to handle cases involving captures of enemy ships at sea, and it could mediate boundary disputes between states, but nothing resembling a Supreme Court existed to interpret national law.2Library of Congress. The Articles of Confederation: The First Constitution of the United States
Each state sent between two and seven delegates to Congress, but no matter how many delegates a state sent, each state cast exactly one vote. Virginia carried the same weight as Delaware.3National Archives. Articles of Confederation Delegates were appointed by their state legislatures, which could recall them at any time, and states paid their own delegates. No one could serve more than three years out of any six. The design made one thing clear: delegates worked for their states, not for the national government.4Government Publishing Office. Articles of Confederation
What Congress Could Do
The Articles gave Congress real authority in a few important areas. Congress alone could declare war and make peace, send and receive ambassadors, and sign treaties and alliances. It managed relations with Native American tribes, ran the postal system, coined money, and set standards for weights and measures.3National Archives. Articles of Confederation Congress could borrow money on the nation’s credit, set up courts to try piracy cases, and settle territorial disputes between states.
These powers were enough to end the Revolutionary War through the Treaty of Paris, maintain diplomatic ties with European powers, and oversee expansion into western territory. On paper, the new nation looked functional.
What Congress Could Not Do
The gaps were bigger than the powers. Congress could calculate how much money the country needed and ask each state for a share, but it had no authority to make any state pay. There was no national tax and no enforcement mechanism at all. If a state chose not to contribute, Congress had no recourse.3National Archives. Articles of Confederation
Congress also could not regulate trade, either between states or with foreign countries. That power stayed with each state. Predictably, states imposed tariffs and trade restrictions on goods from neighboring states, and Congress itself acknowledged that discriminatory trade rules were leading to reprisals it had no authority to stop.5Congress.gov. Intro.5.2 Weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation
The military was in a similar bind. Congress could declare war, but it could not raise an army on its own. It had to request troops from the states, and governors could refuse.
What the States Kept
Article II set the rule that shaped everything else: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”3National Archives. Articles of Confederation Any power not specifically handed to Congress stayed with the states, and the list of powers handed over was short.
Article III called the arrangement not a country but “a firm league of friendship” among the states. The states alone could tax residents, regulate commerce inside and across their borders, and enforce laws. Each state could print its own paper money, and several did so aggressively during the 1780s. Currencies depreciated at different rates, and interstate trade became unreliable. Because the national government had no way to enforce its decisions, everything ran on voluntary cooperation. States routinely ignored Congressional requests for money, troops, and compliance with treaty obligations.
The Voting Rules That Locked Everything in Place
Getting anything significant done required nine of the thirteen states to vote yes. That threshold applied to declaring war, signing treaties, coining money, and spending from the national budget.3National Archives. Articles of Confederation Five states could block anything, and delegates from some states often failed to show up at all, making nine votes hard to reach even on measures with broad support.
Amending the Articles was harder still. Article XIII required unanimous consent of all thirteen state legislatures. One holdout killed any change. Proposals to give Congress the power to levy a modest import tax failed repeatedly because one or two states refused.3National Archives. Articles of Confederation The same weakness everyone could see in the system was the weakness that prevented anyone from fixing it.
The One Lasting Achievement
The Confederation Congress did produce one landmark piece of legislation: the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. It set the rules for governing the territory north and west of the Ohio River and created a process by which new territories could join the union as equal states rather than as colonies.6National Archives. Northwest Ordinance The Ordinance also banned slavery in the Northwest Territory, stating that “there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.” Reconstruction-era lawmakers later drew on that language when drafting the Thirteenth Amendment.7National Constitution Center. The Northwest Ordinance Every new state admitted after 1787 came in through the framework this Ordinance created.
Why the Articles Failed
Unpaid Debts
The United States emerged from the Revolution deeply in debt to France, Spain, and Dutch bankers. Without power to tax, the national government could not raise reliable revenue to pay. By 1785, it had stopped making interest payments to France and then defaulted on installments due in 1787.8Office of the Historian. U.S. Debt and Foreign Loans, 1775-1795 Continental Army veterans had been promised pay they never received in full, and returned home with depreciating paper currency and rising personal debts.
Shays’ Rebellion
In 1786 and 1787, those pressures broke into open violence in western Massachusetts. Farmers, many of them unpaid Revolutionary War veterans, faced heavy debts and aggressive state tax collection. Led by former Continental Army Captain Daniel Shays, roughly 1,500 armed men marched on the federal armory at Springfield in January 1787. Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin had to rely on a privately funded militia of 1,200 men under General Benjamin Lincoln to suppress the uprising, because the national government could not raise troops or funds to respond. The rebellion was put down, but it showed that a national government unable to raise an army, collect taxes, or maintain order was a national government in name only. Calls to overhaul the Articles accelerated within months.
Replacement by the Constitution
The push to replace the Articles began at the Annapolis Convention in September 1786, where delegates from five states met over the state of interstate commerce. Too few states attended to accomplish much, but the delegates issued a call for all thirteen states to send representatives to Philadelphia the following May to strengthen the federal government.9Yale Law School, Avalon Project. Proceedings of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government
That convention had been called to fix the Articles. The delegates instead scrapped them and wrote the Constitution, creating a national government with the power to tax, regulate commerce, raise armies, and enforce its own laws through an independent executive and judiciary.10Office of the Historian. Constitutional Convention and Ratification The new Constitution took effect in 1789. Nearly every power the framers gave the federal government was a direct answer to something the Confederation Congress had not been able to do.