The Articles of and was written by the members of the . It was the forerunner to the . The Continental Congress approved it on November 15, 1777, and then sent it to the states to be ratified.
After all thirteen states approved it, it came into effect on March 1, 1781. Despite not having a working governing charter through most of the years, Congress acted as if the Articles of were in force. The Articles legalized what the Continental Congress was already doing.
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The Authors
The Articles of authors were the committee members formed on June 11, 1776, after the Lee Resolution moved Congress to work toward from .
The committee was made up of delegates from each of the thirteen colonies, and John Dickinson, representing Pennsylvania, was the committee chairperson. The committee was given the task to “prepare and digest the form of a ” for the national Congress was forming. A draft of the document, written mainly by Dickinson, was presented to Congress on July 12, 1776.
People who influenced the tone of the Articles include Benjamin Franklin. Franklin attended the Albany Congress in 1754 and authored the Albany Plan of , a plan to create a unified for the thirteen colonies. Using the Albany Plan as the basis, Franklin presented a draft of the Articles of to Congress in July 1775. Another contributor to early versions of the Articles was Silas Deane, Connecticut, who also submitted a draft later in 1775.
Drafts of the Articles
By the time the Articles of was approved by Congress, six separate drafts were submitted. Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane submitted drafts, and the Connecticut delegation presented the third draft. John Dickinson wrote the fourth draft, and it was with this version that Congress took serious deliberation. A fifth and then a sixth draft was written as the results of the lengthy debate on Dickinson’s original draft.
What is significant about Dickinson’s draft is that he named the nation being formed as the of America. His version provided a congress representative from the states based on population and gave the the powers not designated to the states.
The governments were given powers above the not “expressly delegated to the .” Dickinson’s national charter created a decentralized and limited unicameral with the greater powers in the governments’ hands. This arrangement of a of states was proposed to be “a firm league of friendship with each other.” The congressional delegates were able to reach a consensus on the Articles’ wording when sovereignty was guaranteed.
Voting in Congress would be en bloc by each . The Articles consisted of four sections: a preamble, thirteen articles, a conclusion, and a signatory section. Ironically, John Dickinson was no longer serving in Congress when the Articles of he wrote was approved in late 1777.
After the Articles of was approved in 1777, it was then sent to the thirteen states to be ratified. It took a long time for Congress to approve the draft John Dickinson submitted. Part of the problem was that Congress had to relocate twice during the deliberations to flee from the British Army.
Major sticking points among the delegates were the issues of land claims and sovereignty. When these issues were cleared up, Congress came to a consensus and approved the Articles to send to the states. However, the land issue continued to be an issue during the process and delayed the final for several years.
A month after Congress submitted the Articles, was the first to ratify it. By November of the next year, all the states except Delaware and Maryland had also ratified the Articles. The of Delaware ratified the Articles in February 1779, leaving only the of Maryland. The of Maryland refused to sign the Articles because of the issue over western land claims. Maryland made it clear that it would not ratify the Articles until the states with western land claims ceded them to the nation.
It took two years for Maryland to satisfied that all of the landed states would follow through with this promise. Maryland ratified the Articles in early February 1781, and on March 1, 1781, Congress officially declared the Articles of to be in force as the nation’s governing charter.
The Under the Articles of
Little changed for Congress with the adoption of the Articles as the law of the land. From the time Congress presented the Articles to the states, it operated as if it was law. The official adoption of the Articles merely legalized what Congress had already been actively doing.
The name of Congress was changed to the Congress of the , but Congress continued to be popularly called the Continental Congress. Under the Articles, Congress negotiated treaties with foreign powers and concluded the with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The Congress also developed an organized plan of settlement for the Northwest Territory.
But for the most part, the limitations placed on the United States’ national government made it incapable of effectively governing the country. It became glaringly evident that major changes needed to be made to the Articles for the to function properly within a short time.
A few years after the Articles were adopted, representatives of some of the central states met to work out some trade and economic issues. As news of this meeting spread, more states also wanted to join the meeting. The hope was to make changes to the Articles to make the stranger, and a meeting for this purpose was set for May 25, 1787. At this meeting, it became evident that simple changes to the Articles would not be enough, and it was agreed that a new national charter needed to be created.
This group became the , and work began drafting a totally new .
Quite different from the under the Articles, the new was a strong federal , a bicameral legislature, and separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Nearly two years of difficult work went into the drafting of this new charter. On March 4, 1789, the Articles of was replaced with the .
