Compromises and the Articles of Confederation free essay sample

The Articles of Confederation caused many problems for our founding fathers. There were many important factors that were abandoned in order to run a functional nation. Some of the problems were: no federal army, no national currency, the federal government could not tax, there were no centralized courts for interstate crimes, and it was extremely difficult to pass a law and almost impossible to pass an amendment. Lucky for us our founding fathers met in Philadelphia and discussed how they can approve on the Confederation. Eventually they came up with the Constitution of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Before the Constitution was created there was a lot of arguing and compromising done. Without compromise it would be impossible to create the Constitution. The first problem that had to be solved to create the new government was to have a federal army. The larger problem with that was the federal government had no power and the states had all the power. Each state had their own small military or militia. One of the huge turning points for the decision of having a federal army was Shays’ Rebellion where farmers in Massachusetts got fed up with the taxes handed down by their state and formed a mob (A1 Pg. 64). The mob went on for several hours before the Massachusetts militia put them down. After this incident congressmen decided that a strong federal government was necessary for rebellion and international treats as well. The reason that many states did not want a federal army was because they did not want a strong federal government and they believed that by giving them an army it gave them more power. Another major problem with the Article was there was no national currency. Each state had coined their own money and each states coins were worth different value. In many cases store and traders would not take money from a different state. This was a huge problem for many reasons. After the war we had a huge debt to France because they had given us a ton of money and soldiers to support us. In order to give them money we need money. There was no federal mint and the federal government could not tax (another problem altogether). The other problem they had without a national currency was many people were making counterfeit money from different states because it was so simple. The reason for the lack of federal currency was again a fear of the federal government becoming to powerful and each state becoming equal. Because the founding fathers did not want a tyranny in their new nation they gave the federal government a very minuscule amount of power. The power of the federal government was so limited that they could neither tax the people of the United States, nor the states themselves. This became a huge problem was the US had to pay off their debt to France because they had no money because they could not tax. The other reason it was extremely necessary for the government to hand down taxes was to fund and support a national army. During the Articles of Confederation the federal government was only allowed to request for taxes and not demand. Only 25% of the taxes suggested were paid. After the Constitution the federal government had the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excise. (D2 Pg. 175) While the United Sates were under the Articles of Confederation a problem with the judicial system occurred. The problem was there was no federal judicial system, no centralized courts. That meant it you commit a crime in one state and cross state boarders the next day your most likely going to get away with the crime you committed. This was an extremely dangerous situation for the nation because many crimes were being committed and no one was being convicted. Another problem with not having a centralized court was there was no supreme court where large cases involving multiple states could be held. Another problem with the Articles of Confederation was it was extremely difficult to pass a law and it was next to impossible to pass an amendment. out of the 13 states had to agree on it before the law was passed and all 13 states had to agree to pass an amendment and that rarely happened due to the differences between the North and South. That is why there were many compromises during this time. The most famous of the compromises was the Great compromise. The Great Compromise took both the Virginia and New Jersey Plans and met in the middle. This was the start of the c onstitution and our new government plan. The argument was between large states and small states. The large states wanted to base representatives by population while the mall states wanted all representation to be equal between states. Eventually James Madison with Benjamin Franklin’s help would come up with the Virginia Plan. The Virginia Plan stated that we were to have a bicameral government that consisted of the House of Representatives, that was based on population (what the large sates wanted), and the Senate, where all states had the same number of representatives. (What the small wanted. ) with this bicameral government and the House of Representatives there comes another problem, how do we count slaves? Because the amount of representatives a state was given was based on their population any state with slaves obviously wanted slaves to count towards their population and any state that didn’t have slaves didn’t want them to count towards the population. The two sides in this argument were the North and the South. The South were the ones that wanted to have slaves count towards the population and the North did not. The argument went on for a long time and almost caused a civil war, which would have split the nation, and if that were the case then we would most likely still be a British colony. In 1787 delegates James Wilson and roger Sherman proposed the three-fifths Compromise. The compromise simple stated that every 5 slaves counted for 3 people of the population. After this proposal both the North and the South agreed that this was fair and there was no civil war. To conclude, the Article of confederation caused many problems for the early United States because it weakened the federal government so much that the states did not feel united and instead of one country it was 13 states of their own. After many compromises and conventions our founding fathers came up with a governmental plan that we still use today, the Constitution of Independence. The Constitution gave us a bicameral legislature with three branches of government that all looked over each other in a system called checks and balances. We should all be very thankful for compromises because without them we might not be the nation we are today because it would have been impossible to create the Constitution.