Newly independent nations require a stable government that is strong, efficient, and organized; the United States was no exception after gaining independence from Great Britain. The first Constitution of the United States was The Articles of Confederation which it outlined the national government of the United States. Under the Articles of Confederation the country was no more than a group of sovereign states described by the document to be in a “firm league of friendship” this shows how little the country was united as a whole. The United States lacked a strong central government under the Articles and this led to a number of other issues. Additionally, the nation had no executive or judicial branches of government leaving the country with…show more content… As described in the Articles of Confederation, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right,” this was resultant in each state being sovereign with strong governments. Federally, the government could not collect taxes, regulate commerce, or coin money. Each of these was left to the states. The federal government could not regulate and collect taxes because it had no method of enforcing tax collection. This responsibility belonged to the state governments- known as the requisition system, however states were often unable to collect enough money in taxes. This resulted in a lack of government funds and revenue. Disputes between states broke out over issues of trade and commerce because of the fact that the federal government could not regulate interstate commerce. Unrest was common within the United States and the weak federal government was to blame for this. Congress did not have the power to coin money resulting in states creating their own money; the nation did not have a uniform currency. This only caused inflation, contributing more to the problems caused by the government’s inability to collect taxes. The reasoning behind such a weak federal government was the colonists’ fear of tyranny and an over powerful government like that of Great Britain. However, the government was too weak and the resulting problems lasted for years to…show more content… In the Congress each state received one vote regardless of the number of delegates or the population of the state. Because of how the Congress was set up, amending the Articles and creating new legislature was difficult. Making new laws was challenging because passing a law required the votes of nine states- a two-thirds majority. The voting system in Congress did not take into account the populations of states, so several small states would have more power than one larger state. Making changes to the Articles required all of the states to vote in favour of the change. This proved to be an issue when an import tax was proposed to rectify the issues with tax collection and revenue. The import tax was not passed because two states voted against it. The tax would have financially helped the country and because the system of amending the Articles of Confederation was ineffective, the tax was unable to help the nation. The method for creating new laws under the Articles of Confederation was ineffective in helping the nation create laws to benefit all of the states. Amending the Articles of Confederation made it difficult for Congress to fix other issues that the nations faced because of the Articles in the first
