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AP®︎/College US Government and Politics
Course: AP®︎/College US Government and Politics > Unit 1
Lesson 3: Challenges of the Articles of ConfederationThe Articles of Confederation and Shays' Rebellion
The Articles of Confederation established a weak central government, with states retaining sovereignty and independence. This system led to issues like Shays' Rebellion, highlighting the need for a stronger government. As a result, the Constitutional Convention was held, leading to the creation of the U.S. Constitution and a federalist system.
Read the full text of the Articles of Confederation.
Read the full text of the Articles of Confederation.
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- What was Canada's reasoning for not joining the union?(14 votes)
- The reason Canada did not join the union was because they relized the union had too many weakness.(9 votes)
- how can a FREE government still allow slavery to be legal? Or Can they?(3 votes)
- Many of the founding fathers were ashamed of slavery and acknowledged that it was incompatible with the ideals of liberty which inspired the formation of a free country. However, many of them owned slaves too. In fact, the colonies which permitted slavery and treated slaves as commodities, insisted that slaves should be added to their population so that they could have more representation in the House of Representatives. Notwithstanding the irony of this argument, this demand resulted in the Three-Fifths Compromise under which three-fifths of the slave population of the slave states would be considered during delimitation of seats.
Slavery, an extremely divisive issue, was deeply entrenched in society and the economy in the late 18th century. Any attempt to abolish slavery would have led to widespread unrest and war (just like it did in the 1860s).
So, the founders having abolitionist sentiments relented so as to ensure peace and unity in the newly formed United States and left the issue to future generations to sort out.(12 votes)
- why did Canada not join(1 vote)
- The Canadians weren't as severely affected by British tax policies like the American Colonies were. While there were some protests, many of the Canadians either tolerated the British presence or were frightened by the large British garrisons in Canada. Additionally, Canada didn't join the Union after the revolution probably because of some cultural separation between the American colonies and themselves, and also the fact that there were many attacks from the Americans on Canada, and that some Americans really resented Quebec, because of the land it got through the Quebec Act of 1775 that some of the Thirteen Colonies thought was theirs.(3 votes)
- Why didn't Canada want to join even if the tax part wouldn't affect them that much.(2 votes)
- How didn't the Massachusetts government not find out about Shays' Rebellion?(2 votes)
- How does the Articles of Confederation have a different tone than the US Constitution?(1 vote)
- The Articles of Confederation spoke about the states as separate but friendly. The Constitution spoke about them as being united under one government.(3 votes)
- Why did poor farmers start the infamous Shays’ Rebellion?(1 vote)
- The weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation became apparent to all as a result of an uprising of Massachusetts farmers in the summer of 1786. the farmers of western Massachusetts were heavily in debt, facing imprisonment and the loss of their lands. Many of them were veterans, who owed taxes that had gone unpaid while they were away fighting the Revolution. The Continental Congress had promised to pay them for their service, but the national government did not have sufficient money.(3 votes)
- Was the Shays' Rebellion caused by the Articles of Confederation?(1 vote)
- Shay's Rebellion was less caused by the Articles and was caused more by the lack of effective governance. It's like if someone is bleeding out and you use essential oils as a solution. Is the problem the oils or the bleeding out? So the Articles was more of a shoddy solution for the problem that caused Shay's Rebellion.(3 votes)
- I read somewhere else that the Articles of Confederation was hastily composed and written as a temporary fix to the lack of government. Is that true?(2 votes)
- Why would they pre-agree to something they are even hundred percent sure will happen?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] As we talked
about in other videos, shortly after the
Declaration of Independence in July of 1776, the representatives from what were colonies but
now self-declared states had to think about how
to organize themselves. And so they start drafting
the Articles of Confederation, which go into effect in 1781. Now as we'll see,
Articles of Confederation do not provide for any type
of real central government. It really was a mutual defense union with a little bit of free trade, as well see in the text here. This is some of the beginning passages of the Articles of Confederation, and I encourage you to
read the whole thing, it's actually quite interesting. But you immediately see it
has a very different tone than the one that we see
in the US Constitution. The Constitution starts
with "we the people," while the Articles of
Confederation starts with "to all to whom these
Presents shall come," so it's almost, you know, kind of an awkward business letter. "We the undersigned
Delegates of the States "affixed to our Names send greeting. "Articles of Confederation
and perpetual Union "between the states of New
Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, "Connecticut, New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, "Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina, "South Carolina and Georgia. "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "'The United States of America.'" This part is interesting. "Each state retains its sovereignty," so it rules over itself, it's not giving up its sovereignty
to some type of a union. So it "retains its
sovereignty, its freedom, "and independence, and every
power, jurisdiction, and right, "which is not by this Confederation "expressly delegated to the United States, "in Congress assembled." So they're really viewing themselves as independent countries
that are next to each other that for the sake of fighting
the Revolutionary War, agree to things like mutual
defense and free trade, but they are really separate countries. "The said States hereby severally
enter into a firm league "of friendship with each other,
for their common defense," so this is that mutual defense idea, "the security of their liberties, "and their mutual and general welfare, "binding themselves to assist each other "against all force offered
to, or attacks made upon them, "or any of them, on account of
religion, sovereignty, trade, "or any other pretense whatever." And then it says, "the better
to secure and perpetuate "mutual friendship and
intercourse among the people "of the different States in this Union, "the free inhabitants of
each of these States... "shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities "of free citizens in the several States; "and the people of each State
shall free ingress and regess "to and from any other State,
and shall enjoy therein "all the privileges of
trade and commerce." So people could travel back
and forth between these states, there would be free trade,
but these would be viewed as different countries. One interesting thing that you don't hear people talk a lot about, there
is even a little passage here that allows Canada to
join this confederation. "Canada, acceding to this confederation, "and adjoining in the
measures of the United States, "shall be admitted into, and
entitled to all the advanatages "of this Union; but no other
colony shall be admitted "into the same, unless such admission "be agreed to by nine States." So they're saying hey, if Canada agrees, they are pre-agreeing to allow
Canada to join this union, which Canada obviously does not join. But it's interesting to think
that they thought about this. Now what are the weaknesses here? Well the most obvious one,
I don't have the entire Articles of Confederation here, but how does this United States
of America wield its power? Where does its money come from? It turns out that if it
needs to generate revenue in order to take some action, it can't tax the citizens of the states, the states can only do that themselves. Instead it has to apply to the states in order to contribute to
the United States of America. If you want to take some
type of unified action, well you would have to have delegates from the various states, and meet together and decide what to do. You wouldn't have any strong leader being able to take decisive action. And so there really wasn't a notion of a central government here. There wasn't even a notion
of one country, one nation. It really was about
different sovereign states. And all of this, as we'll
see, will come to a head in the mid-1780s. The United States has a
significant amount of debt exiting the American Revolutionary War. Debt to countries like France. You also have debt on
the individual level. Merchants owe money to
European merchants and traders and lenders, and these
lenders weren't interested in paper currency from
these newly created states. They wanted hard
currency, they wanted gold and they want silver. And so many of the merchants
in the United States in turn put pressure on the
people they lend money to, especially poor farmers, many
of whom had been veterans in the Revolutionary War, to pay their debts in hard currency. And so you can imagine these poor farmers who were kind of the
bottom of this food chain were in a pretty tough bind. They had fought in the Revolutionary War, they had risked their lives, many of them had been injured, but they actually did not
get paid for their service, to a large degree. And then now, they were not
able to even survive as farmers, because not only were they
not able to borrow new funds, but some of their existing funds they had to pay back in hard currency, which wasn't available
in the United States. And so all of this tension
eventually comes to a head in western Massachusetts. This right here is a
picture of Daniel Shays, who was one of these poor
farmers in western Massachusetts who was also a veteran of the
American Revolutionary War who was not paid for his service. And so he eventually
becomes one of the leaders of these rebellious former
veterans, poor farmers, and they start taking the courthouses of western Massachusetts,
making them inoperable. These were the courthouses
where people had to report to in order to talk about how
they would repay their debt. Well you can imagine this
worried many of the merchants who these people owed their debt to. It also worried many of
the founding fathers, because it took some time for the government of Massachusetts to be able to react to this, and while that was happening, through mid-1786 into
the beginning of 1787, this rebellion got stronger
and stronger and stronger. Eventually, on January 25th, 1787, we see things coming to a head where Daniel Shays is leading his rebels to take the armory in
Springfield, Massachusetts, which is in western Massachusetts, but stopped by militia. This is a militia that's paid
for by merchants in the area, who probably want their debt paid, or just wanted functioning courthouses, or did not want all of
these rioting farmers and former veterans. And so this rebellion is put down, but it shows the weakness inherent in the Articles of Confederation. This rebellion starts having
the potential to spread well beyond Massachusetts. But there was not a coordinated action. In fact, it took many
months to even be able to field a militia against the rebellion. It also highlighted the weakness of not having one central government that could take decisive action. Also one central government that could generate its own revenue through taxing the citizens
of all of the states and using that for things like a military, or being able to negotiate
debts with foreign countries. And so Shays' Rebellion is
cited by many historians as one of the main catalysts,
after it was put down, for having the Constitutional
Convention in mid-1787 to rethink the Articles of Confederation. Now as we talked about in other videos, many people went to
this convention thinking we're not just gonna edit the
Articles of Confederation, we need to create a
stronger central government. We need a federalist system where yes, the states can have rights, but we also need a central government. We need a strong leader at the head of that central government. And so they do draft what
is now the Constitution at this convention, and
after the convention, they sell this new constitution, because remember, it has to
be ratified by the states through the Federalist Papers, which we also talk about in other videos, Hamilton organized it, but James Madison and John Jay also significant contributors, and eventually, the
Articles of Confederation does get replaced, the
Constitution is ratified, and it becomes effective
on March 4th, 1789.