The colonies' founding fathers aspired to acquire their independence from Great Britain. The colonies drafted the Article of Confederation to acts as the pact binding them together as unified states after the ratification. The Article of Confederation served as a contract among the thirteen founding colonies in 1777 (Fumurescu, 2018). The founding member states intended to establish an institution responsible for performing crucial foreign and domestic affairs. The article authorized the continental Congress to possess local and global legitimacy in regulating the evolutionary war of Americans, print money, and perform diplomacy with Europe (Wolfe & Callahan, 2016). Moreover, the article mandated the continental Congress to handle territorial conflicts and Native Americans' relations.
The Article of Confederation established a powerless association among the founding states and created a weak central or federal government. Subsequently, the article bestowed more powers on the states. The limited authorities permitted the central or federal government to rely on the national legislature to execute significant projects of public finance, trade, and defence (Wolfe & Callahan, 2016). The article's provision did not promote a conducive arrangement to ensure the sufficient stability of the United States or the colonies. Consequently, I suppose the Article of Confederation exhibited major weaknesses, both economically and politically.
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The Article of Confederation provided limited power for Congress to finance their obligations and to ensure effective enforcement of resolutions. Congress lacked the mandate or authority to enforce taxation (Niver, 2016). Moreover, the article limited Congress to regulate interstate or foreign trade. Politically, Congress lacked the office of president and national court. Specifically, the Article of Confederation created a powerless federal government and bestowed more powers on the states.
Question 2
The inventors of the Article of Confederation intended to manage the political and economic relations among the colonies or member states. The founding fathers anticipated to address challenges such as border disputes among the member states and to have a productive relationship with the entire world. Even though leaders of America and Benjamin Franklin proposed the formation a colonial government in 1754, the founding fathers aspired to establish regional confederation to address multiple problems affecting the states (Wolfe & Callahan, 2016). The founding fathers of the Article of Confederation intended to create a confederation to offer an active political organization, which encouraged the colonies to form a unity for ensuring achievement of specified purposes such as mutual defence, interstate trade, and border disputes.
The founding fathers of the Article of Confederation intended to generate an alliance framework for states to gain victory during the revolutionary war. Additionally, the inventors aspired to establish and maintain the unity of the colonies throughout the revolutionary war. The founding fathers of the article set a precedent that created sovereignty and promoted the expansion of the federal government across North America (Fumurescu, 2018). The Article of Confederation permitted the inventors or founders to admit new states and exercise sovereignty throughout North America.
Question 3
The desire for independence from Great Britain inspired Richard Henry Lee and other like-minded elites to draft a plan of confederation. The congressional committee disregarded the significance of public participation in writing the Article of Confederation. Lack of holistic engagement of the public (members of the colonies such as the peasant farmers) in drafting the article demonstrated an unfair law formulation process. Even though the article aimed at governing the entire territories during and after the revolutionary war, Congress ought to engage members of the colonies holistically. Public participation in the law drafting process assists in curbing instances of civil disobedience and promoting unanimous acceptance of laws. For example, the involvement of the homogenous group of people in drafting the Article of Confederation resulted in Shay's Rebellion in 1786 because the drafting process lacked representation of farmers. Moreover, Congress delayed the compensation of former soldiers and people engaged in a mass movement to prevent auctioning of retired soldiers' property to settle their debts. Fumurescu (2018) holds that the prejudiced formulation of regulations encouraged farmers to demand the abolition of the unfair mortgage.
I opine that the lack of holistic members' participation in the drafting process inspired people like James Madison to describe the Article of Confederation as the contract of amity that promoted alliance between the sovereign and independent states as opposed to addressing commercial concerns of the united colonies. The lack of public participation in the drafting process of the Article of Confederation led to non-inclusive stipulations, which resulted in poor performance in handling economic concerns of the colonies. For instance, the article did not permit Congress to levy taxes and regulate interstate trade. Though the majority of peasant farmers opposed the discriminating mortgage, success of the Article of Confederation resulted from the merchants who had the financial influence of the operations of the states or Congress.
References
Fumurescu, A. (2018). Compromise and the American Founding . Cambridge University Press.
Niver, H. (2016). Articles of Confederation . New York: Rosen Publishing.
Wolfe, J., & Callahan, K. P. (2016). Understanding the Articles of Confederation . Enslow Publishing, LLC.
