The Articles of Confederation

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A few hundred years ago, the United States first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was created. This Constitution created a weak central government in order to give the people the rights that they deserve. This plan of government, however, proved to be too weak and it could not control the people or pay the debts that the country had acquired from the Revolutionary War. One of the many problems of the Articles of Confederation was that it had no power to collect taxes(wikipedia.org). This made the new nation go in huge debt because it had no way of paying the army for their services in the Revolutionary War. The United States did receive some money from neighboring countries in order to pay of the debt and they had also gotten a few pence from the states, but this was insufficient and they still could not pay their debt. Another problem of the Articles of Confederation was that it could not enforce its laws and make the states pay the money that they promised the government. One of the many effects that this problem made was Shays' Rebellion. This rebellion was caused by the taxes that the government made. It stated that everybody must pay for the taxes or they would have their land taken away from them and be sent to jail. This angered the farmers since they could not pay the taxes, and so, this rebellion was formed. In order to prevent any further outbreaks from occurring, our Founding Fathers got together to form a convention, which was called the Constitutional Convention. This convention was to be held to fix the government and stop other occurrences, such as Shays' Rebellion, from ever happening again. When the Founding Fathers went to Philladelphia, they quickly decided that their gov... ... middle of paper ... ...ticles of Confederation was the first constitution of the United States. A few years later, the Founding Fathers found out that the Articles weren't working as they had in mind and they then went to Philladelphia to revise it. When they go there, there were many disagreements about slavery and representation. To stop these arguments, the Connecticut and the Three-fifths Compromise was made. Then, all but Virginia and Washington agreed to ratify the Constitution because it had no Bill of Rights. To fix this problem, James Madison then promised to create a Bill of Rights to protect the people and ensure that there new government would never again turn into one like Great Britain's. Works Cited The Articles of Confederation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation The U.S. Constitution, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution

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