The Articles of Confederation and Shays' Rebellion

Reasons it didn't work

1. States want more votes not 1 state 1 vote
2. The federal government had to ask for troops from the states
3. States make their own currency and cause inflation
4. States don’t trade with each other
5. States have debts from revolution
6. Congress needed 9 of 13 states to pass any laws
7. The federal government couldn’t collect taxes to fund its operations
8. The Articles of Confederation were practically impossible to amend.

(1) The Articles of Confederation allow for one state one vote. All large states wanted more than one vote because of their population. Also they wanted more power than the small states. (2) The federal government had no army, so it had to ask the states for troops. This would make it hard for the U.S. to round up troops to fight in wars or to push the British of the continent.
(3) There were no laws against the states making their own currency. This was the answer the states the came up with for their debts. They also printed large amounts of their currency making it worthless.
(4) Because states could make their own currency, interstate trade was difficult. If you wanted something from another state you had to deal with currency conversion and inflation of the other currency.
(5) All the states had debts for the Revolutionary war. This was to pay of the soldiers and other war expenses. This leads to the next issue.
(6) this made it very difficult to pass any legislation that would affect all 13 states, since neither the north or the south had a majority.
(7) The federal government could not tax U.S. citizens, so it needed voluntary taxes from the states.
(8) The Articles required all 13 states to allow any amendment. Since there were rivalries between the states, mostly the north and south, that rule made the Articles of Confederation impossible to amend.

A tax protest by western Massachusetts farmers in 1786 and 1787 showed the central government could not stop rebellion. The state militia was used because there was no federal army to stop the rebellion. These events scared Founders like George Washington, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton to the point where delegates from five states met at Annapolis, Maryland in September 1786 to discuss changing the Articles of Confederation. The group recommended that a meeting of all 13 states the following May in Philadelphia. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended the Articles of Confederation.

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