government set up by the Constitution was the second attempt at an American government. The first American government, which was in place during the Revolutionary War and for almost ten years afterwards, was the Articles of Confederation. Like many first attempts, the Articles of government had some good ideas and meant well, but it was poorly executed. When delegates gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles, they ended up creating a new constitution. The delegates from the various states each had their own agenda at the Constitutional Convention and that made it difficult for them to agree on what the new government should look like. In order to create a new constitution they had to do something that you do not see much in
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The Articles of government was able to accomplish one notable thing, though. One of the big issues it had to deal with was Americans moving out west, which in the 1770’s and 1780’s meant to places like Ohio and Indiana that were not states yet. The government managed to set up rules for these settlements in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which set up a system for eventual statehood. But most importantly, it forbade slavery in these territories. Other than that, the Articles of government was a flop. The very thing that made it so ineffective threatened to screw up any attempts at new government. This was the issue of competing interests between different states, more specifically the states with large populations and the smaller states. A state with a large population, say Virginia, had different needs than a state with a small population, say Delaware. More importantly, large states might stand to benefit more from any government spending. When the delegates decided to make a new congress these large population states wanted the number of representatives to that congress to be proportional to the states’ populations, which would mean that the larger states would have more representatives than the smaller ones. This idea, a large congress made up of many delegates, was called
The Articles of government was able to accomplish one notable thing, though. One of the big issues it had to deal with was Americans moving out west, which in the 1770’s and 1780’s meant to places like Ohio and Indiana that were not states yet. The government managed to set up rules for these settlements in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which set up a system for eventual statehood. But most importantly, it forbade slavery in these territories. Other than that, the Articles of government was a flop. The very thing that made it so ineffective threatened to screw up any attempts at new government. This was the issue of competing interests between different states, more specifically the states with large populations and the smaller states. A state with a large population, say Virginia, had different needs than a state with a small population, say Delaware. More importantly, large states might stand to benefit more from any government spending. When the delegates decided to make a new congress these large population states wanted the number of representatives to that congress to be proportional to the states’ populations, which would mean that the larger states would have more representatives than the smaller ones. This idea, a large congress made up of many delegates, was called