Confederation and Constitution

Confederation and Constitution
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Confederation and Constitution
Compare the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution
The change from articles of confederation and the adoption of a new constitution was not an easy task. In essence, finding solutions to the problems that were inherent in the articles called for a number of lengthy debates between the federalists and the anti-federalists. The articles of confederation created several problems that inhibited the manner the country was being run and how governing authority was to be shared between the states and the confederation congress.
To start with, the articles gave each state one voting right irrespective of its size. Secondly, the articles did not give the congress power to levy taxes on the states thus inhibiting its ability to cover the national debt that was at that time coming close to 75 million dollars. This situation became even worse by the fact that both the states and the congress printed their own money, which lost value because of the depression caused by the revolutionary. Other problems arising from the articles included lack of a national court system as well as an executive branch to pass into law acts passed by the congress.
Still, each state had its own rules of trade and taxation system and this meant that traders conducting interstate trading were vulnerable to exploitation and unfair treatment. The sovereignty of the nation was not recognized in the articles and only the sovereignty of the state was recognized (Dry, 2014). In essence, despite the fact that the congress could request the states to contribute towards an army, there was no national army and the states could refuse at any time to lend their armies to the congress. This particularly made the nation vulnerable to invasion from outside.
The new constitution on the other extreme came with many changes most of which aimed at empowering the national government and establishing a national army. The constitution also controlled interstate commerce and allowed the central government to levy taxes on individuals. Equally, the new constitution become the supreme law of the land, recognizing the sovereignty of people as opposed to that of the state as prescribed under the articles of the confederation (Lewin, Keefe & Kochan, 2012). In this context, both the central and state governments are representatives of the people with the congress consisting of two bodies: the congress and the senate.
The debate over ratification between Federalists and anti-federalists (using examples from the Federalist papers)
The ratification process of the constitution took on the form of a great debate with the federalists supporting the ratification process and the anti-federalists opposing the whole process (Vermeule, 2012). One of the main issues in the debate revolved around the entrenchment of the bill of rights in the new constitution. The federalists did not consider the new addition as necessary and argued the constitution only limited the government and not the masses. The anti-federalists on the other hand claimed that the central government had much power under the new constitution and the omission of the bill of right...