Summary
The Articles of Confederation were the first formal governing compact of the thirteen United States. A drafting committee was appointed by the Continental Congress on June 11, 1776, with John Dickinson of Delaware serving as the principal author; his initial draft proposed proportional representation and strong central powers, but delegates disputed those provisions for more than a year. The Continental Congress adopted a substantially revised final text on November 15, 1777, and transmitted it to the states for ratification two days later. The final document established the United States as a “league of friendship,” granting each state one vote in Congress regardless of population, reserving all powers not expressly delegated to the states, and crucially withholding from the central government the authority to levy taxes or regulate interstate commerce. Unanimous ratification was required — the last holdout, Maryland, ratified on March 1, 1781, bringing the Articles into force as the nation’s first constitution.
Significance
The Articles of Confederation represented the first attempt by the thirteen states to define their collective relationship and create a functioning national government during wartime. Its weaknesses — particularly the absence of taxing power, the inability to enforce requisitions on states, and the requirement for unanimous consent to amend — created fiscal and political crises throughout the 1780s that ultimately prompted the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which replaced the Articles with the present Constitution of the United States.