Before the U.S. Constitution, there was another national framework: the Articles of Confederation. Adopted by the Continental Congress in 1777 and fully ratified in 1781, the Articles joined the states in a “firm league of friendship” while leaving much of their governing authority in state hands.
Read as a government document, the Articles are striking not only for what they established, but for the limits they placed on the new national government. They were a practical attempt to unite states wary of concentrated power—and a record of the compromises that shaped the country’s first years of independence.
A union, but not a powerful central government
The Articles gave the United States a Congress in which each state had one vote. States could send delegates, but Congress could not directly tax people or businesses to fund its work. Instead, it could request contributions from state governments. It also lacked a separate national executive branch and a general federal court system.
Those arrangements reflected the states’ desire to protect their independence after breaking from Britain. The document recognized each state’s sovereignty and reserved powers not expressly delegated to the United States. At the same time, it gave Congress responsibilities involving matters such as war, diplomacy and relations with Indigenous nations.
The result was a national government that depended heavily on the states to carry out decisions and provide money. That dependence did not make the Articles meaningless: they established a shared structure and rules for cooperation. But it made some collective tasks difficult, particularly when states disagreed or failed to meet requests.
Changing the agreement required everyone
The amendment rule underscored how carefully the document guarded state consent. The Articles said that an alteration required approval by Congress and confirmation by the legislature of every state. In practice, that made changes difficult to secure.
The document’s adoption also took years. Congress approved the Articles in 1777, but all thirteen states did not ratify them until March 1, 1781. Maryland had held back, in part over disputes about western land claims. Its eventual ratification brought the Articles into force as the country’s formal governing framework.
That long path matters when reading the text: the Articles were not simply imposed by a single national authority. They were an agreement that required the states’ approval. Their final article described the union as perpetual, while also setting a demanding procedure for altering the agreement.
A document that helps explain the Constitution
By 1787, delegates met in Philadelphia to address problems in the existing system. The Constitution that emerged created a stronger federal structure, including separate executive and judicial branches and a national government with authority to raise revenue. The Articles were replaced when the new Constitution took effect in 1789.
It is tempting to treat the Articles only as a failed predecessor. But the document is more useful as a record of a real political question: how could former colonies act together without recreating the kind of distant authority they had rejected? Its provisions offer a concrete answer—one that favored state control—and its limitations help explain why the next governing document took a different form.
The National Archives’ transcription makes it possible to follow that answer article by article. Rather than reading the Articles as a rough draft of the Constitution, readers can see them as a distinct compact: a first attempt to make a union work while keeping its members firmly in control.
