Confederation and Constitution copy 2 Essay

Confederation and Constitution
After the United States became independent from Great Britain, the Congress drafted what would become the first constitution. The Articles of Confederation were drafted in 1777 and was ratified by all 13 states four years later in 1781. During this time American colonists were cautious about a central government, as they had suffered at the hands of the Great Britain government, who abused its powers. For this reason, the Articles of Confederation rejected the idea of a single central government. The Articles of Confederation proved to be inadequate as it has numerous weaknesses. In an attempt to resolve the flaws, the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan were proposed during 1787. However, the representatives were unable to come to an agreement until the Connecticut Compromise or better known as the Great Compromise, which provided equal representation for both large and small states in the upper and lower house (Keene, 2011). Eventually, in 1787, the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. In order to comprehend why the Articles of Confederation were ineffective the flaws of the Articles should be taken into consideration and addressed. Other information that needs to be reviewed is the Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan as they attempted to provide a solution to the Articles of Confederation flaws. Also, how were these two plans different from each other? In addition to that, the reason to why the Virginia and New Jersey plans could not be agreed upon and how did the came to a compromise under the Great Compromise. Furthermore, what changes did the new Constitution provided and how did it solve the Article of Confederation flaws. Finally, how the Federalist and Anti-federalist viewed the new Constitution and how were they disagree with each other will be explained. The Articles of Confederation provided the then new states, a form of government. However, due to their fear of a strong central government, the Article of Confederation did not grant the congress the power of taxation as an attempt to prevent relieving Britain’s taxation abused. Because the government was still in charge of the military, solving economic problems, and diplomatic issues and lacked the funding the government was unable to solve economic and military issues (Keene, 2011). As a consequence, Americans were easy targets at sea and in an effort to resolve the issue and fund a military congress printed a large amount of money that was not backed by gold or silver, thus later leading to inflation (Keene, 2011). Another flaw included the fact that the government did not have control over the trade between states or trades with foreign nations as each state retained its sovereignty, freedom, independence, jurisdiction, and every power and right (Tansill, 2008). Most decisions had to be agreed upon by at least nine states, thus making it hard for congress to pass laws. Also, under the Articles of Confederations any changes to the Articles could only take place if all 13 states agreed. For these reasons the Articles of Confederation proved to be inadequate for the United States. In an attempt to replace the Articles of Confederation different Plans were presented by the states including Virginia and New Jersey. The Virginia Plan was presented by Edmund Randolph and written by James Madison. The plan called for a bicameral legislative branch in which every state would be represented based on their population. It also proposed a separation of powers into three different branches the executive branch, legislative branch, and the judicial branch. Both the Virginia and New Jersey Plan allowed tax collection and provided power to deal with economic issues (Keene, 2011). However, under the Virginia Plan smaller states would be at a disadvantage as they had less population, thus meaning less representation. Smaller states did not agree with the Virginia Plan and their response was the New Jersey Plan. The New

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