Jon Pustilnik
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union
After a long effort to gain independence from Great Britain, the young nation of the United States needed to formulate a government. One of the most fundamental ideas they had was that the government couldn’t resemble that of England because they were afraid that it would become tyrannical as England’s was. Many delegates gathered and they concluded that a republic would be an ideal government for the United States. The document that would be the centerpiece of the new republic government was the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. This government turned out inefficient because the delegates didn’t take the time to carefully plan out all aspects of the new government. The Articles were inefficient in making a successful economy, creating a strong federal government and maintaining a sense of patriotism and national unity.
In an effort to not have a strong federal government, the economy was kept separate through each state. States only cared about the economic well being of their own state and taxed their citizens as it felt necessary disregarding the effects on the nation. There were few people in the country, including Robert Morris who wanted a centralized economy so all of the states could join together and pay off the debts. Morris could do nothing about this though because only state governments could tax and each had to pay off it’s own debts. A plan like this didn’t come to be until the constitution was written and Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as the Secretary of Treasury. The economies of the southern states were based solely on farming and produce, and if produce wasn’t valued as high the debts of those states grew. There was nothing the federal government could do to help because they had no such power under The Articles. More people were living in the southern states as time went on, and because competition in farming grew, each person couldn’t make as...