Encarta: Articles of Confederation, 1999). The articles were approved by the Congress in 1777 and were ratified successfully by the various states, ending with Maryland in 1781 (Grolier: Articles of Confederation, 1993). Maryland was slow to ratify because it lacked a colonial charter, and feared that other states that claimed vast western reserves would dominate the union because of their size. It agreed to enter the confederation only if all the states concerned ceded to the Union their western claims. The states involved eventually agreed. Beginning with New York in 1781 and ending with Georgia in 1802, all made the necessary cessions (Encarta: Articles of Confederation, 1999).Under the Articles of Confederation, the states’ explicitly retained their power, which meant that their individual legislature remained supreme in matters of taxation and administration of justice, as provided by their own constitutions. Congress was a body in which only the states, not the people, were represented. It functioned as a large plural executive, not as a legislature (Grolier: Articles of Confederation, 1993). Therefore, Congress could only ask the states for money to run the government, and depending on the states feelings toward the issue at hand might or might not contribute funds to the government. Although Congress had power to issue its own currency and to borrow money on behalf of the United States, it had no authority over the internal finances of the states, which issued currency and borrowed money on their own. In the unstable financial climate of the post-revolutionary America, these limitations on its power prevented the Congress from keeping domestic peace (Encarta: Articles of Confederation, 1999).During the period in which the Articles were in force, nationalists, such as George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, worried that rivalries between the states and social conflicts within them threatened the ...
