The Articles of Confederation were the United States of America’s first attempt at a formal, written constitution. The first draft of this document was written by John Dickinson, author of the ‘Olive Branch petition’, though Dickinson’s objection to independence saw him removed from Congress in late 1776, shortly after he penned the draft.

Dickinson’s text underwent almost a year of discussion and debate, and it had changed markedly by the time Congress passed it in November 1777. This was only the first stage in its journey to adoption, however. For the Articles of Confederation to be enacted, all 13 states would have to ratify separately. This long process of to-and-fro between the 13 states and Congress took just over three years. In most cases, individual states refused to ratify until their claims to western territories had been negotiated and settled with other states.

That its title employed the word ‘confederation’ offers a clue about its intention. The Articles were more a loose affiliation between 13 separate, sovereign states than a binding national constitution. Indeed, Article II specifically describes them as such. The union created is described in Article III as a “firm league of friendship”.

The Congress formed by the Articles was not a true national government but an umbrella government, possessing some responsibilities and concurrent powers with the 13 states but having no coercive authority over them. For example, Congress alone had the ability to declare war – but it had no capacity to demand that the states supply troops or equipment. Congress had no capacity to tax so its costs had to be met by requisitions from the states, which could be delayed or withheld. And although Congress was nominated as the ‘court’ by which the states could resolve disputes, it had no coercive power or jurisdiction over any of the states.

Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress was nominally an important body but in reality it was beholden to the states for authority, respect and revenue. In the desperate 1780s, the Confederation Congress would prove to be virtually powerless, a “half-starved limping government” according to Washington (1784).

“One cannot understand the Articles if one writes of them in terms of their weaknesses, or of the political naivety of their creators. They can only be understood in relation to the internal revolution in the American states: the individual and group interests, the social cleavages, and the inter-state conflicts that existed at the outbreak of the Revolution. Each of these involved problems that had to be reckoned with [when] creating a central government acceptable to thirteen independent states and the clashing social groups within them.”
Merrill Jensen

It was not surprising that the states constructed a constitution that would allow this situation to develop – after all, had they not instigated a revolution against a strong central power?

Such a weak confederation might have worked had there been a stronger sense of national unity and co-operation between the states in the first place. Benjamin Franklin had signalled the need for greater American unity as early as the Albany Plan of 1754 but little have eventuated.

In the years before 1776, the 13 American colonies continued their long tradition of xenophobia and competition for territory. They managed to unite for war and revolution but had not yet established enough common ground to co-operate with each other – at least not without strong, central institutions. Under the Articles, states were effectively left to their own devices – and a return to border disputes, land grabs and internecine squabbling, with no strong national authority to intervene or negotiate.

While it is often said that the Articles of Confederation were a ‘failure’, it is perhaps more accurate that they gave the 13 infant states enough autonomy and freedom to ensure the new nation would fail. By the mid-1780s, it was clear that something would need to be done to rectify this imbalance between states’ rights and the national interest.

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