Pros And Cons Of The Articles Of Confederation

The Articles of Confederation was the active form of government in America by 1777, despite not being universally ratified until 1781. During the early years following the Revolutionary War, Hamilton recognized the budding defects in current governmental structure, most notably the fact that the federal government could not wrangle the various State Legislatures to move in unison on a path to preserve the Union and protect America’s newfound liberty. Hamilton could see the writing on the wall, The Articles had created a tenuous relationship between the the States and the National governments. Hamilton’s primary criticism of the Articles was that the system did not provide the necessary amount of power for the federal government to preserve and protect the Union and its interests. The federal government lacked autonomy to take action on issues that impacted multiple states, due to the limited powers of the executive branch and propensity of legislatures to debate actions to exhaustion without taking significant action. The …show more content…
After experiencing the Coercive Acts and fighting in the Revolutionary War, most men feared a powerful central authority. The Articles of Confederation reflected that fear by establishing a federal government that had to rely on the states’ compliance and approval to truly effect change in the republic. That being said, Hamilton recognized that the current structure of power posed a greater threat to the union than the system they had just thrown off. Hamilton believed that the federal government should assume the powers to protect the Union. To him, the true danger was that several states could pull apart the nation at the seams by focusing on their own agendas. In his letter, Hamilton identified causes for the weak federal government and issues related to those causes that a strong federal government could