From 1777 until 1787, the organizing framework of the United States was the Articles of Confederation. These Articles defined the mechanics but didn’t really create a “government.” Rather than a country, the Articles defined the United States as, “A firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare.” Each state held “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.”
Under the Articles, there was no Executive Branch, no President, no Cabinet, no federal court system. The only entity created by the Articles was a one-chamber Congress in which each state got a single vote. The approval of 9 of the 13 states was required to approve laws and an amendment required unanimous consent.
This alone was enough to slow action at the national level to a crawl, but the framework was even more restrictive. The only powers Congress had were related to foreign policy: to declare war, appoint military officers, sign treaties, make alliances, appoint foreign ambassadors, and manage relations with the American Indians. But even the war-making power was constrained: Congress had no ability to tax; the only way to get money or soldiers was to ask the States to provide them. Congress couldn’t defend itself, enforce its will between states, handle internal and external security – or pay its debts.
The outbreak in 1786 of Shays’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts provided the most serious threat to the Confederation. A rebellion by disaffected and indebted farmers, most of them Revolutionary War veterans, who were losing their farms because they couldn’t afford the taxes imposed by the Massachusetts legislature, briefly overwhelmed the Massachusetts civil authorities and sent fear through the ruling classes in every state. If the States were pressed to the limit by a mob of farmers, how would they deal with a foreign invasion?
Commerce between the states was also nearly impossible due to the lack of a common framework or currency, contradictory state laws, and the near impossibility of collecting interstate debts.
Finally, raiding of our ships by pirates in the Mediterranean highlighted the need for a government that could control diplomatic, trade, and military actions in a world where U.S. traders no longer had the protection of the Royal Navy.
These obvious weaknesses led many to call for reforms to the Articles, which led to a meeting in Philadelphia which created an entirely new charter: the Constitution.
The underappreciated Confederation did have one epic accomplishment: passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. It was created to organize the “Northwest Territories” – the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, plus part of Minnesota. This legislation set the framework for western expansion and organization of new states. It convinced the states to abandon their extensive and often overlapping western land claims, putting control of western expansion firmly in the hands of federal authorities (and providing a much-needed revenue source in western land sales).
It also set the procedure for forming and financing new territories and transitioning them to statehood on a par with the original 13. It established the state-county-township-section construct under which every later state (except Louisiana, which kept its French parish system) was formed. It established a mechanism to finance free public education. And it foreshadowed the future North-South conflict by prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territories. The Confederation may have suffered from serious weaknesses, but it passed one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation ever.
