The Articles of Confederation

On this day in 1777, in the city of Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress passed the Articles of Confederation and submitted it to the States for ratification. For four years the States debated the document and finally, in 1781 Maryland, the last holdout, accepted it and it went into effect.

Usually described as "America's First Constitution" the articles were more in the form of a treaty -- a "league of friendship" -- among sovereign states that bound them to deliberate and act together in certain areas of endeavor where a united front was deemed imperative, such as relations with foreign countries or with Indian nations. Its major concern was to create mechanisms and procedures to resolve potential disputes that would threaten that unity. It was not concerned with governing or coercing the sovereign states and safeguards were built into the document to preserve and guarantee State sovereignty.

Opinions vary among historians as to the effectiveness of the Articles. Nationalists argue that it was too weak to be effective, but others have pointed out that it was not understood at the time to be a precocious attempt to create a nation and that for most people in most States it was quite adequate.

Here is a link to the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, which has a nice set of links to supporting materials like early drafts prepared by Benjamin Franklin and John Dickinson as well as a fascinating account of the drafting debates in Thomas Jefferson's Autobiography.

Check it out here.