The Articles of Confederation were the first U.S. constitution, ratified in 1781. The Articles were a pragmatic compromise born of necessity in the American Revolution (1775-1783) and were in effect until replaced by a new constitution in 1789.
The Articles' principal purpose was to create a formal, limited authority for the wartime central government that at first was conducted informally by the Continental Congress. By July 1776, prior to the Articles, Congress had authorized the colonists to replace their British-created governments with new governments established "under the authority of the people"; appointed George Washington as the Continental Army's commanding general; provided for army staff appointments; and authorized the issuance of currency to raise war funds.
The Articles gave the United States exclusive power to conduct national military and foreign policy. They also established the relationship between the states and the central Confederation government. The Articles gave Congress power to appropriate funds for the "common defence or general welfare." They granted Congress power to make commercial treaties and gave it judicial powers in capture disputes, all disputes between states, and certain private interstate land disputes. States retained virtually all authority in domestic policy. The Confederation government was conducted by a unicameral Congress without a separate executive or judicial branch.
Under the Articles, the United States had limited successes. Congress managed the Revolutionary War, including the creation of foreign alliances and the financing of the costly conflict, subsequent peace and commercial treaty negotiations with Great Britain and other European governments, and the beginning of land distribution from the national domain. In 1787 Congress created the first major U.S. territory, the Northwest Territory. Nevertheless, by 1787 many Americans had concluded that the Articles contained profound flaws.
Although confederation proposals had been made as early as 1775 by Benjamin Franklin and others, Congress was unwilling to consider confederation until after it had adopted its resolution declaring American independence on 2 July 1776. The Articles were not adopted by Congress until 15 November 1777 because war pressures and fundamental disagreements prevented completion of the document until it became apparent that completion would assist the United States in obtaining an alliance with France and in controlling wartime inflation.
On 22 July 1776 Congress began debate on a 12 July proposal reported after a month of deliberation by a committee chaired by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, whose other members included Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts. That proposal, commonly known as the Dickinson plan, reflected the committee's views on a draft apparently prepared by Dickinson, a wealthy lawyer trained in England.
Dickinson's draft, which granted Congress broad powers in military and foreign affairs, would also have limited state powers in important areas. For example, the draft protected both religious dissenters' rights and existing commercial rights and privileges against state interference and provided that Congress could raise troops without local participation.
Dickinson's proposals on religious dissenters and raising troops were rejected in committee. The panel's proposal nevertheless contained important limits on state powers. Its motives for this approach are uncertain but may have been mixed. Some delegates may have sought to eliminate as many sources of discord within and between the states as possible in order to strengthen the war effort, while others may have wanted to limit state interference in existing social and economic relations.
After debate by the full Congress, a revised version of the Dickinson proposal was ordered to be printed for the delegates on 20 August 1776. This draft omitted all limits on state power over commercial rights (later partially restored). There was no agreement among the delegates on several other essential provisions. Although the Articles were debated sporadically by Congress over the next year, little progress was made. Completion of the Articles became urgent only after the U.S. military victory at Saratoga, New York, on 17 October 1777, which made alliance with France a realistic possibility, in turn requiring a government that possessed formal legal authority to enter such an alliance.
The four most heavily disputed issues concerning the Articles were the structure of congressional representation, the method for allocating national expenses to the states (that is, taxation), control over western lands claimed by states, and the relationship between state and Confederation powers. Debate on these issues was complicated by threats from delegates that unless their position was accepted, their states would not join the Confederation.
The Dickinson plan had proposed that each state would receive one vote in Congress. Large states, however, vigorously sought proportional representation based on wealth or population, but the "one-vote rule" was adopted, largely because failure to adopt it might have resulted in certain states rejecting the Confederation.
Debate over the taxation formula was similarly heated. During a 30 July 1776 debate on a motion by Samuel Chase of Maryland to exclude slaves from the taxation allocation formula, strenuously opposed by John Adams of Massachusetts and James Wilson of Pennsylvania, a southern delegate threatened that if slaves were not treated as property, "there is an end" to confederation. Congress agreed instead to use the value of land and improvements in allocating taxation, an impracticable system palatable to slaveholding states.
The compromises on representation and taxation reflected the leadership of statesmen from different regions. They included Richard Henry Lee of Virginia and John Adams, who recognized that compromises, even regarding important principles, were necessary to enable wartime national unity.
The Dickinson plan had proposed giving Congress the authority to fix the boundaries of states, some of which had vast western land claims extending to the "South Sea," and to dispose of lands in the national domain. These proposals were anathema to states like Virginia that had large claims, but were vociferously supported by "landless" states such as Maryland on revenue and growth grounds. The Articles denied Congress power to limit state land claims. (However, continued controversy later led several states to make large land cessions to the United States.)
Congress also debated the boundaries of state sovereignty. Thomas Burke of North Carolina attacked the Dickinson plan as an infringement on state autonomy. Burke successfully added a provision to the Articles preserving state sovereignty and retaining for the states every power not "expressly delegated to the United States."
Once these issues were resolved, congressional adoption followed quickly. By July 1778, after Congress had defeated thirty-six state-proposed amendments, most states agreed to ratify. Through January 1779, all but Maryland had done so; Maryland made it unanimous in 1781.
For much of the period from 1781 to 1789, economic conditions in the United States were poor: prices and real wages were falling; there was a seriously adverse trade balance; indebtedness was growing; and related civil unrest, such as Shays's Rebellion of 1786-1787, was emerging. The Confederation government was unable to compel either the states or Great Britain to comply fully with the peace treaty of 1783. Congress could not effectively resolve interstate territorial disputes, such as those arising in Pennsylvania and from a separatist movement in Vermont. In 1784 Spain closed the Mississippi to American navigation, and in 1786 Congress disagreed along sectional lines over the U.S. foreign policy response. Americans increasingly questioned whether the Confederation's limited government could successfully meet the growing country's domestic and foreign policy problems.
In 1787 progress occurred on one important front. Congress adopted the Northwest Ordinance, which permitted the creation of new states in ceded lands north of the Ohio River (the Northwest Territory) and provided that slavery would be prohibited in the Territory.
By 1787, however, advocates of a stronger central government felt that the Confederation had very important weaknesses and needed fundamental reform. They argued that it lacked essential powers, such as those over taxation and interstate commerce, and was unable to pay its debts, including those owed to its war veterans. It could act only through the states and therefore could not enforce its laws or judicial decisions directly against individuals; nor, as a practical matter, could it do so against disobedient states. Many of its most essential decisions could be made only with the consent of nine states. Its Articles could be amended only with the unanimous consent of the states, and thus important amendments proposed during the 1780s to strengthen congressional powers over taxation and commerce failed despite widespread support. Finally, it had no ability to prevent abuse of economic, judicial, or other state powers that had interstate impact or to protect states against domestic violence.
Many of the Articles' flaws stemmed from their creation as a unifying measure to address the urgent necessities of wartime government. The Articles reflected a desire on the part of some to limit centralized government that arose both from colonial experience with Great Britain and from the belief that liberty and political power were inherent enemies. At the same time, however, as a pragmatic wartime compromise that sought a broad consensus and resolved only those issues requiring immediate resolution, the Articles provide only a limited insight into contemporary Americans' evolving views of freedom and government.
The Articles nevertheless serve as an exceptionally useful benchmark for understanding the fundamental changes in American government later made by the Constitution's establishment of national, majority control of areas such as federal taxation, commerce, and military appropriations, its creation of a federal separation of powers, and its authorization of enforcement of federal laws directly against individuals under a powerful regime of federal law supremacy, while at the same time preserving a significant constitutional role for the states.