Articles of Confederation Theme of Politics

Politics is the art of distributing power through compromise…and what gives rise to basically all great satire.

But only one of those key points is important in terms of the Articles of Confederation.

The Articles of Confederation, one of the nation's first political documents, attempted this unsuccessfully. Crafted by a group of elected representatives, the Articles were the first stab at creating a political entity comprised of all the former British colonies. In order to make "the United States" a reality, the document needed to make each state happy enough to sign on.

That required creating a very weak central government, and that makes sense under the circumstances. The American patriots who wrote and ratified the Articles were throwing off a tyrannical, faraway government, and didn't want to risk creating a new government that would be the next Britain.

1. Why do you think the Articles of Confederation didn't include an executive branch of government?
2. After reading the Articles of Confederation, do you think that this system sounds better or worse than the current laws of the Constitution? Why?
3. If you were alive during the mid-1780s, what would be some of the advantages and disadvantages of living under the Articles of Confederation government?
4. What problems with the Articles of Confederation would have most bothered Federalists and nationalists, like Hamilton and Madison?

The Articles of Confederation put all power in the hands of the nation's elected legislature, Congress. This reflects tone of the main concerns of the Revolutionary period: the fact that Britain could levy taxes on Americans without giving them representatives in Parliament.

The last states to ratify the Articles of Confederation, Virginia and Maryland, joined the union only after being convinced that the new government would allow them to expand their land claims in the west, which the British government had prohibited them from doing.