Articles of Confederation

The Articles of Confederation, drafted by the Second Continental Congress in 1777 and ratified on March 1, 1781, served as the first governing framework of the United States from 1781 until the Constitution took effect in 1789. Authored largely by John Dickinson, the document was titled "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" and explicitly preserved state primacy: Article II declared that "each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence." The Articles created a "firm league of friendship" among the thirteen states rather than a consolidated national government, reflecting revolutionary-era distrust of centralized authority modeled on the British Crown and Parliament. Ratification was delayed for over three years, chiefly by Maryland's refusal to accede until states with western land claims, especially Virginia, ceded those territories to the common government.

Structurally, the Articles vested all powers in a unicameral Congress in which each state delegation cast a single vote regardless of population. There was no independent national executive and no federal judiciary; Congress administered through committees and a presiding officer styled "President of the United States in Congress Assembled." Ordinary legislation required the assent of nine of thirteen states, and any amendment to the Articles required the unanimous consent of all thirteen state legislatures, which proved a fatal rigidity. Congress could declare war, conduct foreign affairs, coin money, and run a postal service, but it could not levy taxes, regulate interstate or foreign commerce, or compel states to honor financial requisitions. It depended on voluntary contributions from the states, which routinely fell short, leaving the union unable to pay its Revolutionary War debts or maintain a credible standing force.

These structural weaknesses produced acute crises in the 1780s. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, one of the Confederation Congress's enduring achievements, established an orderly process for admitting new states and barred slavery north of the Ohio River. But economic disorder, competing state tariffs, and the inability to suppress unrest culminated in Shays' Rebellion (1786–87) in western Massachusetts, an armed uprising of indebted farmers that the central government was powerless to quell. The Annapolis Convention of 1786 called for a broader meeting, leading to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, which abandoned mere revision and drafted an entirely new Constitution. The Constitution's framers deliberately corrected Confederation defects by creating a bicameral legislature, an independent executive and judiciary, the power to tax and regulate commerce, and the supremacy clause; it was ratified per its own Article VII by nine states rather than the unanimity the Articles demanded.

For the FSOT and comparable exams, the Articles of Confederation are tested in the U.S. Government and History sections as the essential contrast to the 1787 Constitution. Typical question angles ask candidates to identify specific powers Congress lacked (taxation, commerce regulation), the unanimity requirement for amendment, the absence of executive and judicial branches, and the precipitating events—Shays' Rebellion and the Annapolis Convention—that produced the Constitutional Convention. Knowing the Northwest Ordinance as the period's principal legislative legacy is a frequent distinguishing detail.