The Articles of Confederation; the original document outlining government in the newly freed United States of America, was quickly replaced by the well know Constitution, but why? If the Articles were so ineffective why where they adopted in the first place? The Articles were rather weak and had many problems, problems that were addressed in the newly formed Constitution.
The main problems stemmed from the time in which the Articles of Confederation were written. In 1776 the Second Continental Congress started drafting the Articles of Confederation. During this time the American Revolution was still being fought and while the document wasn’t truly ratified until 1781--still two years before the revolution was over-the mindset of that time was …show more content…
After the Articles failed the Constitutional Convention was not restricted pandering to the wishes of the individual States. There was a new idea behind this document. No longer in the mindset brought on by the American Revolution the authors of this document were heavily influenced by enlightenment ideas on focused on defending the rights of the individual citizen. This radically changed the way the government was established in the document. The now federal government was split into three sections, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. There were two houses of congress one the Senate with two representatives from each state, and one the House of Representatives with representatives allotted by population. The Federal Government had the power to tax and raise an army meaning they could actually enforce the laws—which were much easier to pass requiring only a majority and approval from the president. The epitome of the newly written Constitution was its flexibility. Amending the Constitution was much easier requiring only 2/3 of Congress, and 3/4 of state legislator to