Question

Why were changes made from the Articles of Confederation to form the Constiution?

Accepted Answer

The Articles of Confederation failed because they did not give Congress and the national government enough power.  The new United States just fought a war to end what they considered tyrannical rule of a strong government that overpowered local government and the leaders of the U.S. feared a powerful central government.  Because of this, they did not give the central government the power it needed to rule effectively.  It did not give Congress the power to tax, so the government ended up printing money which caused inflation. It did not give Congress the power to draft troops, so the U.S. military was small leaving the U.S. weak.  Congress did not have the power to control interstate commerce or stop states from printing their own money, causing economic chaos within the U.S. The Articles did not give Congress the power to place tariffs on foreign goods, hurting American businesses that could not compete with cheaper British goods. The U.S. government had no chief executive so there was no one to enforce the laws that were passed.  The list can go on. With the rebellion led by Daniel Shays in Massachusetts, the leaders of the U.S. realized the Articles were not working which led to the Constitutional Convention where the Articles were abandoned and the new U.S. Constitution was written.
The new Constitution addressed many of the problems created by the Articles by creating a federal system of government with a much more powerful national government. It gave the national government the power to tax, draft troops, control interstate commerce, etc.   It also created an executive branch and a federal court system, both of which were lacking under the Articles of Confederation.  The greatest argument against the new Constitution was that it gave the national government too much power.  This argument was addressed by the framers by creating a system of checks and balances, creating a system with three branches, each with its own separate powers (separation of powers), and creating a federal system where powers were divided between the federal government and state governments, with some powers delegated to the federal government, some reserved to the states and some shared by both.

Answer

The United States had changed. Unfortunately, its form of government had not. The Articles of Confederation had proved remarkably effective for the exigencies of the Revolutionary War. But they were completely inadequate for the much bigger challenge of winning the peace. Simply put, the Articles of Confederation were too loose and too weak to provide the foundations for a new country taking its place among the international community of nations.
The Articles of Confederation embodied the "Spirit of '76," the decentralized radical republican system of government beloved of Thomas Jefferson. The American colonists had just successfully fought against what they regarded as a tyranny. This fear of tyrannical government trampling over inalienable rights strongly influenced their fear of centralized administration. It was inevitable, then, that any subsequent system of government would involve the widest possible disbursement of power. Under the Articles, the United States became a confederacy in which ultimate sovereignty resided with the states.
This was all very well in principle. But in practice, the United States needed a much stronger system of government to deal with a number of pressing issues. For one thing, the United States had incurred significant debts in its conflict with the British. Those debts were plaguing the American economy. Congress could request funds from the states, but they weren't obliged to provide them. In many cases, they didn't. The war had been fought, among other things, on the principle of "no taxation without representation." So the Articles specifically denied Congress tax-raising powers. Again, the fear of potential tyranny remained deeply etched in the minds of many Americans.
As well as economic and foreign policy, the Articles proved singularly inept at handling incidents of domestic disturbance. Shay's Rebellion in 1786, for example, started off as a peaceful protest against government economic policy. But it quickly got out of hand, leading to violent disorder. The uprising represented a clear and present threat to the authority of government. But Congress was unable to raise sufficient revenue to pay for a militia to crush the rebellion. Instead, they had to rely on a group of wealthy businessmen to provide the appropriate resources.
The raising of militias was the responsibility of state governments. This was another legacy of the Revolutionary War; state militia and groups such as the Minutemen had fought against a centralized tyranny. It was understandable, therefore, that any armed force in the new republic should be controlled by the sovereign states. Supporters of the Articles of Confederation were concerned that a national militia could be used by central government to crack down on legitimate dissent and snuff out the precious republican liberty that Americans had fought so hard to establish. Indeed, it's telling that many of the Articles' supporters regarded Congress's response to Shay's Rebellion as being an instance of just such an attack on Americans' hard-won liberties.

The Articles of Confederation

Why were changes made from the Articles of Confederation to form the Constiution?

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