Negative Effects Of The Articles Of Confederation

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The Articles of Confederation were a major change within the colonies because they had both negative and positive effects. The Articles of Confederation still lived up to the principals of the declaration of Independence in many ways. These articles were made to create a government where the people had the power and the government was mainly to unite all of the states. The main idea within the articles did succeed, they guaranteed that the people would have the majority of the power and the federal government would have very limited power. Within The Articles of Confederation it is stated, “The United States in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war,” which clearly displays the …show more content…
These issues were made to give less power to the federal government and more power to the people, but the articles didn’t give enough power to the federal government. This leads into the first major flaw within The Articles of Confederation, which is they didn’t give enough power to the government. The Articles of Confederation made it so the federal government was not in charge of taxes, militia, or control trade. The one that caused the most issues later on was the fact that the government couldn’t raise and army, this was a problem because of something called Shay’s Rebellion. Shay’s Rebellion was a group of veterans from the Revolutionary War that didn’t get paid for their services and decided to rebel. Next, the federal government also didn’t have power over what currency each state used, and although it did give more freedom to people it also could’ve made things more confusing. Another one of the flaws of The Articles of Confederation is that they were too strict. If the federal government wanted to create a new law they would need a super majority, this means that 9/13 states needed to agree on created this new law. Congress couldn’t even give themselves more power because in order to edit The Articles of Confederation all 13 states needed to agree on this. The Articles of Confederation both limited the power of the federal government and didn’t allow flawed rules to be changed. Overall The Articles of Confederation both had positive and negative effects, but in the end they had enough flaws to no longer be present in today’s

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