Articles of Confederation

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION. Adopted by Congress 15 November 1777; ratified 1 March 1781. Proposed by Richard Henry Lee on 7 June 1776 when he offered his resolution for independence, the idea of confederation was then studied by a thirteenmember committee. A month later, on 12 July 1776, it presented the "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" to Congress. Principally the work of John Dickinson, the articles proposed a loose union, in which the principal powers granted to Congress were exclusive authority to declare war and make peace, to conduct foreign relations, to provide central direction of the war effort, to resolve disputes among the states, and to provide for the disposal of western lands. After more than a year of intermittent debate, the thirteen articles were formally adopted on 15 November 1777 and sent two days later to the states for ratification. Congress adopted the articles on the basis that states would pay their share of governmental expenses, especially for wartime expenditures, in proportion to their land area. Ratification was delayed by Maryland because it refused to act until states with western land claims (the so-called "three-sided states") ceded those claims to the United States. Those lands would later be sold to pay off the national debt. Virginia yielded on 2 January 1781, Maryland signed on 27 February, and final ratification took place 1 March 1781. Ratification formally dissolved the Second Continental Congress, and on 2 March the delegates sat for the first time as "The United States in Congress Assembled." By then, the extraordinary strain of the war effort had shown the need for a more powerful central government, especially in the matter of the power to levy taxes. The articles were obsolescent before they were ratified.

The United States were governed under the Articles of Confederation until the ratification of the Federal Constitution on 21 November 1788. On 10 October 1788 the last Congress under the Articles transacted its last business, and on 4 March 1789 the first Congress under the Constitution met in New York City.

SEE ALSO Continental Congress; Dickinson, John; Lee, Richard Henry.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ford, Worthington Chauncey. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. 34 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904–1937.

Henderson, H. James. Party Politics in the Continental Congress. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987.

Jensen, Merrill. The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774–1781. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1941.

???????. The New Nation: A History of the United States During the Confederation, 1781–1789. New York: Knopf, 1950.

Onuf, Peter S. The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.

Rakove, Jack N. The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretative History of the Continental Congress. New York: Knopf, 1979.

                                    revised by Harold E. Selesky