The Ineffectiveness Of The Articles Of Confederation

Between 1781 to 1789, the Articles of Confederation provided the United States with the basis of government. Unfortunately, the government put forth by the Articles of Confederation failed to be an effective one due to the limits of power it imposed on Congress. Congress was denied several vital duties including being able to tax the states directly, enforce treaties and regulate trade. The powers denied to Congress made it too weak, and as a result an ineffective government. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress could not directly tax the colonies. Instead, Congress had to ask the states for funding, but could not enforce this request. Effectively, this meant that Congress had no real method of generating funding for itself as funding by the states was completely voluntary, and taxation was not a given power. In order for anything to run effectively, it requires its budget to be met, because without it it cannot function properly. Some states like Rhode Island in their assembly’s letter to Congress (November 30, 1782) justified this arrangement by saying that “by granting to Congress a power to collect moneys from the commerce of these states... for which the expenditure of which they are not to be accountable to the states, they would become independent of their constituents.” In the real world though, Congress’s inability to raise funding for itself created an issue as seen in a letter from Delegate Joseph Jones of Virginia to George Washington (February 27, 1783). In it, it mentions Congress’s “delay in complying with [the army’s] requests [for bonus and back pay]” as a result of “the inability of Congress to pay their demands, unless furnished with the means by several states”. Congress’s inability to fund itself means that they also cannot pay those in the army, which is not good for keeping army morale high during conflict. Again, Congress has to rely on the states to help make it run because of the Articles of Confederation 's limit on their ability to tax the states. Along with not being able to tax the states, another example of the Articles of Confederation’s ineffectiveness was how Congress could not regulate trade between the states and with foreign nations. …show more content…
This meant that each state set up their own regulations on trade. Some states even charged a tariff fee when trade occured between states, even though all the states were in the same country. The estimated market value of US exports to the Great Britain, tracked between the years of 1770 to 1792 show where the national government having the ability to regulate trade would have been useful. In the period of time tracked where the Articles of Confederation was in place (1784-1789), even though the population of the United States grew from 3.2 million people to 3.8 million, the market value of US exports to the UK grew by only a meager $500,000 from $4.2 million to $4.9 million. In previous years, when the population of the United States grew around half a million people, the market value of US exports had more than doubled from $3.2 million to $6.5 million in only a 5 year period. If Congress had control over the trade regulations of the nation, they may have been able to create policies that ushered in a more positive trading relationship between it and the United Kingdom. Instead, each of the thirteen states had thirteen different trade policies with each other and with foreign countries like the UK, which created fragmentation within the Union on trade policy. When Congress tried to create a nationwide impost (tax) on imported goods, some states rejected it, like Rhode Island in their letter to Congress claimed that the “proposed impost is repugnant to the liberty of the United States” and rejected it. Something Congress was allowed to do was to broker treaties with foreign nations, but it could not require the states to abide by the treaties. In some cases, it did not matter that Congress could not require the states to comply with treaties as they would have done so anyways, like in the case of the United States Minister to Great Britain (March 7, 1785), where the United States asked for it to be put “into possession of all the posts and territories within [its] limits.” Obviously most Americans would agree with this