Articles Of Confedoration: Success

Question 1

How was the confederation a success in terms of govenrment?

Answer 1

Maintained a high degree of state sovereignty (blessing and a curse)
- it was designed to restrict a central govenrment which achieved some success
- Most notable success of the Confederation was its success in dealing with western expansion
- It was able to establish expansion as being a ‘national domain’
- this unified colonies like Maryland which did not have a western border with Virginian which did as it was not the states that would benefitted the individual settler not their retrospective state

Question 2

How was the confederation successful with expansion ?

Answer 2

• congress realistically planned that western expansion would create new territories which posed the risk of new states not apart of the union
• 1779 congress resolved for the creation of new states to be equal in the union as the prior colonies
• 1785, land ordinance repaid soldiers and maintained reserved land for education whilst also reducing potential conflict by dividing land into thousands of townships divided into 26 sections 430 acre sections for purchase
• 1786, land could only be taken from natives by milita or purchase to ensure order and safe settlement
• 1787 northwest ordinance, when new territories reached 60k residence them became states and entered the union with equal rights with territories like Ohio and Illinois joining under this provisions

Question 3

What is the context to the articles of confederation?

Answer 3

Governed the US from 1781 to 1789
- faced numerous problems and has been remember in the light set out by federalists; as a radical and selfish which divided states
- ratified in 1781 but formed the basis of govenrment from 1777
- often described, like David Reynolds’s, as encouraging a loose accociation of states not a national government