Think back in time. The colonists, a small and relatively unorganized group of rebels, had just fought and defeated the most powerful army in the world. Today this would be like what the Afghani people did to the Soviets, then to the Americans--they never gave in. But I digress.
The colonists won their independence, so what's next? The Articles of Confederation were the blueprint for what was to come. Almost. The colonists had an idea of what they wanted, but didn't consider some of the ramifications of what they might say. The document took effect March 1, 1781.
The Articles setup a framework of government and two branches which still exist (legislative and judicial) and named the country which it represented, but it's weaknesses were many. For example, in Article IV, it refers to 'friendship between the states'. Friendship? In politics? These colonists had clearly never thought of a political action committee.
However, the biggest single weakness was that of the federal government. There was no national army, no federal court system, amendments to the Articles required a unanimous vote (families can't even get a unanimous vote; how could 13 states do anything without opposition?) , Congress had no power to tax...in summary, the federal government could do very little. This may sound fine in theory, but when there's a problem in one state, other states are unable to help. Also, each state had only one vote in Congress (regardless of size) and laws required a 9/13 majority to pass. This was truly a supermajority situation, in which the minority (as few as 5 of the states) could keep any law from passing.
This was replaced by the US Constitution on March 4, 1789. I'll discuss the Bill of Rights in the next post and will conclude discussions of all the amendments before the presidential election.
