Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation were the first constitution of the United States, in effect from 1781 to 1789. They created a loose league of sovereign states with a weak central government that had no power to tax or regulate trade.
The Articles of Confederation were drafted by the Continental Congress in 1777 and ratified by all thirteen states in 1781. Written by leaders who had just fought a war against a distant central authority, they deliberately kept power with the states. The national government consisted of a single-chamber Congress with no executive and no federal judiciary, and each state cast one vote regardless of population.
The structural weaknesses were severe. Congress could request money from the states but could not levy taxes, and it could not regulate interstate or foreign commerce. Major measures such as declaring war, making treaties, and borrowing or appropriating money required the agreement of nine of the thirteen states, and amending the Articles required unanimous consent — a threshold that made reform nearly impossible. States printed their own currency and imposed tariffs on one another's goods.
The government did achieve something lasting. The Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 organized the western territories, established a process by which new states would enter the union as equals, and barred slavery in the Northwest Territory. But Shays' Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787 — an armed uprising of indebted farmers that Congress had no means to suppress — convinced many leaders the framework had failed. Delegates met in Philadelphia in 1787 ostensibly to revise the Articles and instead wrote the Constitution.
AP US History treats the Articles as the pivot of the 1754 to 1800 period, and AP US Government uses them as the baseline for understanding why the Constitution distributes power the way it does. Both exams ask you to connect specific weaknesses — no taxing power, no commerce regulation, unanimity for amendment — to the specific remedies the Constitution supplied.
Key takeaways
- The Articles of Confederation served as the first US constitution from 1781 to 1789.
- Congress could not tax or regulate commerce, and amendments required unanimous state consent.
- There was no national executive or judiciary, and each state had one vote in Congress.
- The Northwest Ordinance was the framework's major success; Shays' Rebellion exposed its central weakness.
- The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was called to revise the Articles but replaced them entirely.