Articles of Confederation (1777): America's First Constitution

The Articles of Confederation were the first written constitution of the United States. Adopted by the Continental Congress on 15 November 1777 and in force from 1 March 1781, they joined the thirteen states in what the text called a “firm league of friendship”. The Articles gave Congress responsibility for war and diplomacy but almost no power to raise money or enforce its decisions, and their failures led directly to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Background

When the colonies moved towards independence in 1776, their leaders knew they would need some form of union. On 7 June 1776 Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a resolution calling for independence, foreign alliances and a plan of confederation. Five days later Congress appointed a committee, with one member from each colony, to draft such a plan.

John Dickinson of Pennsylvania wrote the committee’s draft, which was presented on 12 July 1776, eight days after the Declaration of Independence. His draft gave considerable power to the central government. Congress then debated it on and off for more than a year, while fighting a war and twice fleeing Philadelphia before the British army.

The debates exposed deep disagreements. Small states wanted equal votes, while large states wanted representation based on population. States argued over whether contributions to common expenses should be based on population, and whether enslaved people should be counted, or on land values. States with claims to land west of the Appalachians clashed with those without such claims.

Adoption and ratification

Congress, meeting in exile at York, Pennsylvania, after the British occupied Philadelphia, approved the final text on 15 November 1777 and sent it to the states for ratification. The approved version gave the states much more independence than Dickinson’s draft. Article II declared that each state “retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence”, along with every power not expressly delegated to Congress.

All thirteen states had to ratify. Most did so by 1779, but Maryland held out. It insisted that states such as Virginia, whose colonial charters gave them vast claims stretching to the Mississippi and beyond, should hand those lands over to the national government for the common benefit. Only after Virginia agreed to cede its claims north-west of the Ohio River did Maryland ratify. Its delegates signed in early 1781, and the Articles took effect on 1 March 1781, less than eight months before the British surrender at Yorktown.

How the government worked

The Articles created a single-chamber Congress in which each state, whatever its size, had one vote. States could send between two and seven delegates, paid by the states themselves. Important measures, including declaring war, making treaties, borrowing money and coining money, needed the approval of nine states. Amending the Articles required the consent of all thirteen state legislatures.

There was no separate executive branch and no national system of courts. A President of Congress chaired its sessions but had little independent power, and a “Committee of the States” could act when Congress was not sitting. Day-to-day business was increasingly handled by departments of foreign affairs, finance and war created by Congress in 1781.

Congress could make war and peace, send and receive ambassadors, settle disputes between states, manage relations with Indigenous nations, and run a postal service. It could not levy taxes. Instead it asked the states for money through requisitions, which they often ignored or paid only in part. It also had no power to regulate trade between the states or with other countries.

Achievements

Despite its weaknesses, the Confederation government had real successes. It completed the war of independence and negotiated the Treaty of Paris of 1783, in which Britain recognised American independence and boundaries stretching to the Mississippi.

Its most lasting achievement concerned the western lands. The Land Ordinance of 1785 created a system for surveying territory into square townships, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 set out how the region north-west of the Ohio River would be governed and eventually divided into new states equal to the original thirteen. It also banned slavery in that territory.

Failures and the road to the Constitution

Lack of money was the Confederation’s central problem. Congress could not pay its war debts, the interest due to foreign lenders, or its own soldiers. In 1781 and again in 1783 it proposed amendments allowing it to collect a 5 per cent duty on imports, but Rhode Island blocked the first and New York the second, since amendments required unanimity. In March 1783 discontent among unpaid officers at Newburgh, New York, raised fears of a military challenge to civilian government until Washington personally calmed them.

After the war, states quarrelled over trade, issued their own paper money and taxed one another’s goods. Britain kept troops in forts on American soil, and Spain closed the lower Mississippi to American trade. Congress was often unable even to gather enough delegates to do business.

In 1786–1787 an armed uprising of indebted farmers in western Massachusetts, known as Shays’ Rebellion, convinced many leaders that the national government was too weak to keep order. A meeting at Annapolis in September 1786 called for a wider convention, and Congress endorsed a meeting in Philadelphia “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation”. Instead, the delegates drafted an entirely new Constitution. Once ratified, it replaced the Articles, and the new federal government began work in 1789.

Myths and facts

A popular claim holds that John Hanson of Maryland, not George Washington, was the first President of the United States. Hanson was elected President of the Continental Congress in November 1781 and was the first to serve a full one-year term after the Articles took effect. But the office was simply that of presiding officer of Congress, with no executive power, and Samuel Huntington and Thomas McKean had already presided over Congress under the Articles earlier in 1781. Washington, elected in 1789 under the Constitution, was the first President with executive authority.

It is also sometimes said that the Articles created no real nation. Yet Article I gave the union its lasting name: “The Stile of this Confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America’.” Under the Articles the United States made treaties, borrowed abroad and acted as one country in foreign affairs.

Timeline

• 1776, 7 June: Richard Henry Lee proposes independence and a plan of confederation.
• 1776, 12 July: John Dickinson’s committee presents its draft to Congress.
• 1777, 15 November: Congress adopts the Articles at York, Pennsylvania, and sends them to the states.
• 1781, 1 March: The Articles come into force after Maryland’s ratification.
• 1783, 3 September: The Treaty of Paris ends the war of independence.
• 1786, September: The Annapolis Convention calls for a broader meeting.
• 1787, 13 July: Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance.
• 1787, 17 September: The Philadelphia Convention signs the new Constitution.
• 1789, 4 March: The first Congress under the Constitution is due to meet, ending the Confederation.

Why it matters

The Articles of Confederation reflected Americans’ fear of a powerful central government after their struggle against Britain. They held the states together through the war and laid the foundations of western expansion, but their weaknesses taught the founders that a lasting union needed a government able to tax, regulate trade and enforce its laws. That lesson shaped the United States Constitution.