A national government that could not act alone
The Articles of Confederation did create a national government, but that government lacked several powers needed to act independently of the states. Congress could conduct diplomacy, make war, manage western lands, and coin money, but it depended heavily on the states for money, compliance, and much of the country's governing capacity.
Six structural weaknesses explain why the national government often could not act effectively: taxation, interstate commerce, control of coinage, an independent executive, a national judiciary, and a workable amendment process. Each gap left the national government dependent on thirteen separate governments choosing to cooperate.
What the national government could not do
The Confederation Congress could request money from the states but could not tax individuals directly. A state could pay its full share, a partial share, or nothing, and Congress had no enforcement tool beyond persistent asking. War debt went unpaid for years because collection depended entirely on state cooperation that did not arrive.
Congress also could not regulate commerce between the states. States taxed goods crossing their own borders as they saw fit, sometimes specifically to disadvantage a neighboring state's merchants.
Currency exposed another weakness. Congress could coin money, but it did not hold exclusive national control over coinage. The states retained monetary authority, which made national economic coordination harder. The Constitution later gave Congress the power to coin money and regulate its value and prohibited states from coining money.
The Articles created no independent executive to enforce national law and no federal judiciary to resolve disputes between states, so conflicts that crossed state lines had no reliable national forum.
Amending the Articles required unanimous consent from all thirteen states. A single state's refusal could block a change that every other state supported, which made even narrow, widely favored reforms difficult to enact.
Why state sovereignty created collective problems
The Articles preserved extensive state sovereignty on purpose, reflecting a recent revolution against a distant, centralized authority. Each state held one vote in Congress regardless of population, and real power to tax, raise troops, and regulate commerce remained with the states rather than the national government.
That design produced a collective-action problem. A state that paid its full share of national expenses while other states paid less received no particular benefit for its cooperation and bore a larger relative cost. The rational response for any single state was to contribute less and let others cover the difference, and when every state reasoned the same way, national capacity collapsed even though each state still wanted the union to succeed.
Shays' Rebellion and the fear of governmental weakness
Between 1786 and 1787, indebted farmers in western Massachusetts, many of them Revolutionary War veterans, faced foreclosure and imprisonment for unpaid debt. Led by Daniel Shays, armed groups shut down local courts to stop foreclosure proceedings and moved toward a national arsenal at Springfield.
The Confederation Congress could not fund a response. Massachusetts had to rely on a privately financed state militia to put down the uprising. Shays' Rebellion showed political leaders what weak national capacity could mean in practice: Congress could not reliably raise money or respond to a serious internal crisis.
Government power and individual rights
The movement toward a stronger national government produced immediate disagreement over how much power that government should hold. Federalists and Anti-Federalists shared a republican starting point: government authority rests on the people. They disagreed about the scale of national power and the risks it created. Federalists argued that a government with real capacity to tax, regulate commerce, and enforce law was necessary and could still be checked by its own structure. Anti-Federalists argued that concentrating power at a national level, especially over a large and distant population, threatened both state authority and individual liberty.
Neither side rejected the other's core commitment. Anti-Federalists did not want the absence of a national government; they wanted a more limited central government with stronger protection for state and individual authority than the proposed Constitution initially offered. The ratification debate centered on those competing views of national power, state authority, and individual liberty.
What the Constitution had to fix
The Constitution addressed each major weakness of the Articles with a specific institutional change.
| Function | Under the Articles | Under the Constitution |
|---|---|---|
| Taxation | Congress could request funds; states could ignore the request | Congress can levy taxes directly on individuals |
| Commerce | No power to regulate trade between states | Congress can regulate interstate commerce |
| Currency | Congress could coin money but lacked exclusive national control over coinage | Congress coins money and regulates its value; states may not coin money |
| Executive | No independent executive to enforce national law | A president heads a separate executive branch |
| Judiciary | No federal court system | A federal judiciary resolves disputes under national law |
| Amendment | Required unanimous consent of all states | Article V: proposal by two-thirds of both houses of Congress or by a convention called after applications from two-thirds of state legislatures; ratification by three-fourths of the states |
Where the missing capacity shows up
Each scenario below turns on a different gap in the Confederation Congress's authority. Decide which capacity is missing before checking the answer.
Scenario 1. The Confederation Congress asks each state to contribute funds to pay Revolutionary War debts. Several states pay only part of their share, and Congress has no way to compel full payment. Missing capacity: direct taxation. Congress could request money but had no power to collect it from individuals.
Scenario 2. A ship carrying goods between New York and New Jersey faces a tariff that New Jersey imposed specifically to disadvantage New York merchants. Missing capacity: regulation of interstate commerce. States could tax trade crossing their own borders however they chose.
Scenario 3. Two states dispute a shared river boundary, and no national court exists to resolve the disagreement. Missing capacity: a federal judiciary. Disputes between states had no reliable national forum for resolution.
Scenario 4. A proposal to give Congress the power to tax imported goods fails because a single state refuses to ratify the change. Missing capacity: a workable amendment process. Unanimous consent let one state block a reform every other state supported.