Compare And Contrast The Articles Of Confederation With The U.S. Constitution

Student’s Name
The AOC and the Constitution
Course
Date
The AOC and the Constitution
Thesis Statement
The main goal of both the AOC and the Constitution was to have a government that is both unified and centralized.
The AOC and the US Constitution
The Articles of Confederation (AOC) and the Constitution have similarities. For starts, both texts provided an outline for a centralized government that is unified (Beard, 2017). They also allow the government to take care of policy matters as well as ratifying treaties. Furthermore, both require the government to determine monetary value. They also ensure that single states cannot declare war. Finally, the states respect these documents, and term limits exist for government offices as well.
Despite the primary goal of having a government that is both unified and centralized, the differences between these two texts are prominent. The AOC was the first Constitution for the original states of the US after which the Constitution replaced it. The Constitution makes a powerful government while the fear of an authoritative government limited the AOC (Maggs, 2017). Canada admittance into the US is in the articles but absent in the Constitution. Strikingly, states have power in the AOC while the central government is the leading power in the Constitution. One Congress has power in the AOC, but with the Constitution, the Congress gets subdivided into the Senate and the House of Representatives. Whereas the US government controls commerce and uses taxes as a revenue source, Congress could not levy taxes. While the judiciary, executive, and the legislature make up today’s government, Congress had only one chamber (Maggs, 2017). The government also has more considerable influence over states compared to the Congress as the states maintained their freedom. The articles require all the states to agree for the making of amendments while the Constitution requires just 3/4. Finally, the AOC came to be in 1777 while the Constitution first appeared in 1788.
The Extent to which the AOC solved problems
The articles aimed to make the states to have a common defense, to secure their freedom and to have mutual welfare. The issues that the new nation faced were either economic or involving foreign policy (Beard, 2017). The debt that resulted from the revolutionary war and the worthless paper money were the challenges faced. Among other problems too were the dwellings of Britons in the Old Northwest and Spain’s refusal to recognize boundaries in the nation’s western and southern parts.
The new nation had problems to which the AOC could solve to an extent by giving the Congress some powers. This included printing money, controlling political ties, and influencing foreign relations (Maggs, 2017). Furthermore, Congress could set up admiralty courts, declare war, start postal services, and influence the affairs of Native Americans. Before ratification, the document served in conducting business, directing the American Revolutionary war and sorting out issues to do with territories. Despite the authority to request states to pay taxes and manage the military, Congress could neither levy taxes nor recruit troops (Way, 2015). The AOC led to unity in fighting for inde...