America’s first national government — and why a weak Congress could not hold.
A league of friendship, not a strong nation
During the Revolution the states needed a national government, but they had just escaped a powerful Parliament. They wrote the Articles of Confederation to keep most power in the states.
Under the Articles there was one branch: a Congress. There was no president to enforce laws and no national court system to settle fights between states. Each state had one vote, no matter how many people lived there.
Remember: Articles = first U.S. government. One-house Congress, no executive, no national judiciary.
What Congress could and could not do
Congress could declare war, make treaties, coin money, and run a postal service. It could ask states for soldiers and money. It could not make states pay. Requests were voluntary.
Changing the Articles required every state to agree. Passing major laws needed a supermajority. One stubborn state could freeze the whole country.
Why it failed in real life
After the war the country was in debt. Congress could not tax, so it could not reliably pay soldiers or debts. States printed their own money and taxed each other’s goods as if they were foreign countries.
Shays’ Rebellion (1786–87) in Massachusetts showed the danger. Farmers who could not pay debts shut down courts. The national government had no reliable army to respond. Leaders decided the Articles could not “form a more perfect union.”
Remember: No power to tax + no power to enforce + no national courts + hard to amend = failure.
What the failure taught
The Constitution that replaced the Articles kept a union of states, but it gave the national government real tools: taxing, regulating interstate commerce, an executive, and federal courts.
It also made amendment possible without unanimous consent. The Articles were not useless history. They proved what a government that is too weak cannot do.