The Article of Confederation was officially written by the second continental congress in 1777 but didn’t ratify it until the colonies approved it in 1781. The Articles of Confederation was a weak government even through the articles was written for the states independence. The Article of Confederation was written to provide a form of government for the 13 colonies.
The Articles of Confederation did not help keep the Unites States work together, which lead to numerous weaknesses. One of the major weaknesses of the Article was that it didn’t have a strong government. All the states have a colossal amount of debt form the previous wars and the States refused to give money to the government. The Articles of Confederation was going to place tax on imported goods, but this didn’t happen because Rhode Island refused this. They refused this because Rhode Island had a strong trading system and they didn’t want to stop this. Rhode Island didn’t also want the Articles of Confederation to have too much power (Doc. A). The Article didn’t have the power to tax individual states (Doc. C).
It was very difficult for he laws to pass in colonies since 9 out of the 13 colonies were needed to approve for the law to pass and 13 out of 13 states to amend the Articles. This became even worse after the revolution. Many people ignored the laws printed by the congress. In the 1780s, the population of United States started growing while the market value of United States export to the Great Britain decreased by a little (Doc. B).
Of course that wasn’t the only weakness of the Articles of Confederation. On March 7, 1785 John Jay said the Great Britain refused leave the United States. They didn’t leave until the united States pay the loyalist for the land that we took during the war. But the Confederation congress wasn’t allowed to do this. The Articles of Confederation has problems and improvements taking place. The problems caused issues to the government to take control (Doc. D). The Newburg Conspiracy involved men of the Army not receiving pay. It took place in 1783 under George Washington. The people in the Army wanted to get paid in gold (Doc. C). During this time, there was a problem with the Spanish were navigating the Mississippi river. The Spanish didn’t let the states use the Mississippi river the confederation congress