Articles of Confederation in AP US Government

A weak center built on purpose

The Articles were drafted during the Revolution by people who had just broken away from a king and Parliament that taxed them without consent. So they kept real power in the states. The Articles themselves say "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence," and each state got one vote in Congress no matter its size.

The states' own constitutions, written after colonial rule ended, show the same instinct. Many gave most power to elected legislatures and kept governors weak. These state charters are an illustrative example the course pairs with this topic, because they show where the distrust of executive power came from.

This is Unit 1, Topic 1.4, Challenges of the Articles of Confederation. The bigger question is how much power should move from the states to a national government, which is the same debate that runs through federalism for the rest of the course.

Five gaps in the Articles and the constitutional fix for each

The course names five specific weaknesses. Each one lines up with a part of the Constitution, and matching them is the most direct way to show you understand the topic.

• No centralized military power. Congress depended on states to supply troops, so it couldn't respond to Shays' Rebellion. Fix: Congress can raise and support armies (Article I), and the president is commander in chief (Article II).
• No executive to enforce laws, including taxes. Congress could only request money from states, and states often didn't pay. Fix: Article I gives Congress the power to tax, and Article II creates a president to carry out the laws.
• No national court system. There was no permanent national court system, although Congress could arrange tribunals to resolve disputes between states. Fix: Article III creates the federal judiciary.
• No power over interstate commerce. States taxed each other's goods and trade got messy. Fix: the Commerce Clause in Article I.
• No exclusive power to coin money. States could issue their own currencies. Fix: Article I gives Congress the power to coin money, and states are barred from doing it.

Amending the Articles required every state to agree, which is a big reason these gaps couldn't just be patched.

Shays' Rebellion and the push toward Philadelphia

In 1786-87, indebted farmers in western Massachusetts, led in part by Daniel Shays, rose up against tax collection and court foreclosures. Congress had no army of its own to send, and Massachusetts had to put the uprising down with its own militia.

The rebellion scared political leaders because it showed the national government couldn't protect order inside its own borders. It added urgency to calls for revising the Articles, and the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787. Delegates ended up writing a new document instead of amending the old one.

Using the Articles as a foundational document on the FRQs

The Articles of Confederation are one of the required foundational documents, so they can serve as evidence on the Argument Essay. A prompt about whether the national government should hold more power, or about federalism, lets you point to the Articles as proof of what happens when the center is too weak. A strong answer names a specific weakness, explains its effect (states ignoring requests for money, trade wars between states), and ties it to the constitutional change that responded to it. For the rebuttal, you can grant that the Articles protected state sovereignty and individual liberty from a distant government, then explain why that tradeoff didn't hold up.

On Concept Application, a scenario might describe a modern confederation or a government that can't collect revenue. Your job is to explain the effect using the Articles as the comparison point.

In multiple choice, expect short scenarios like states printing rival currencies or taxing each other's goods. You'll be asked to identify the weakness or the constitutional provision that fixed it. Text stimuli may quote the Articles directly.

"No power" versus "no exclusive power"

A common wrong answer says Congress under the Articles had no role in money or war at all. In fact, Congress could declare war, make treaties, borrow money, and coin money. The problem was that it couldn't compel the states, and it shared the coinage power with them. That's why the course wording is "exclusive" power to coin money.

Another trap is matching the wrong weakness to the event. Shays' Rebellion points to the lack of a national military, while state tariffs and competing currencies point to the commerce and coinage gaps. Also, any answer that mentions a weak president enforcing laws under the Articles is wrong, because there was no president heading a national executive branch. Congress did have a presiding officer called its president, but that was a role running Congress, not an executive office.