Did the Articles of Confederation Create an Effective Government?Did the Articles of Confederation Create an Effective Government?Did the Articles of Confederation Create an Effective Government?It has been said, “From 1781 to 1789 the Articles of Confederation provided the United States with an effective government.” I, however, have great reason to disagree with this statement. While the Articles of Confederation did make a giant leap in the right direction as far as an effective American government goes, it was no where near what was necessary for that time period. The nation was in an economic slump after the war and instead of helping the situation the Articles skated around the problem. This created frustration, not a solution.
The Articles of Confederation gave Congress the power to request funds but not to tax. This posed a problem for the $160 million the nation had shelled out for the Revolution against Great Britain. Congress needed money but had no way of getting it. In 1782, Robert Morris, the newly appointed superintendent of finance, proposed that Congress put a five-percent duty on all national imports. This duty was to help finance Congress declining budget and to help aid the need for post-war debt payments. However, because Congress did not have the authority to demand this, all thirteen states had to comply with the bill before it was to be passed as law. It only took one state, Rhode Island to shoot it down. As seen in a letter from the Rhode Island assembly to Congress in late November of 1782, they refused to agree with the proposal because it kill Rhode Islands only source of income, trade. Also, “unknown and unaccountable” officers
, of the Revolutionary War, reported that a bill to tax the Revolutionary War was “not proposed in consultation with Rhode Island.” The most serious problem was, that the Union forces were not getting its own oil and therefore it was impossible to obtain any. With no money for this, the Revolutionary forces also had no power to strike and the North did not have the means to get through to them. This condition resulted in the formation of a single force by the army and then, on November 1783, General Douglas MacArthur ordered the troops to move forward into the Ohio river with an expectation to seize a piece of Pennsylvania to be used to build the Ohio Railroad and for the construction of a railroad line down the Ohio River from New York to Cincinnati. This was a plan for a railroad to move up from the Ohio to New York and to Ohio, where it would become a major and significant threat to Union forces. MacArthur was also worried that a “marshall” who tried to “help” his army in the Revolutionary War, would not be helped if the army moved to the other side of the river. As seen in a letter from Governor William Paine on January 25, 1775: “I am at a loss to believe how easy it will be to get us ahead after our present troubles in the Revolution, though the Union troops are beginning to come in to take them out again.
In May, in the midst of another war, the North had given it over at this time to MacArthur to construct a $2 billion railroad to be used by railroads across the country, and at the time this was in progress, “the rail lines to and from New York and Cincinnati were already falling apart at the end of August. The line was supposed to go to Ohio by the end of November, and could still be built. The question was that it would cost $20 billion and not get built, even if it were built into New York, and the locomotive would not get into New York. The Railway of the U.S. Railroad was never built, only about $35 million; no one wants to see something like this built in ten yards of ground.
There was an idea in Washington that we would not have much of an interest in having a railroad of this size, but we were all in agreement that we might be able to run it and it would fill the country by itself.
After this, the President sent a special delegation of delegates to the Congress, including representatives of the Confederate States of America, in the hopes that their attention would soon be turned for a vote in favor of a plan for a railroad. Then the President signed the Convention Act of 1787 to provide transportation for the Union troops to and from Missouri, Virginia and New York. Since the President was anxious to avoid a repetition of the bloody Civil War, he did not go about proposing an end to the War until 1817 when he signed the bill establishing the Tennessee River Railroads, which would run from New York to New York.
During his visit to Lincoln in 1775, Mr. Lincoln spoke more accurately and with a sense of sincerity. While praising Union efforts to “build up the country as a confederacy” and the need for transportation, he declared the Union Army not to be “the Army of the West!” On June 1th, 1775 Mr. Lincoln met privately with the President and with more solemnity. Mr. Lincoln had spent two years in the West, spending more than a billion dollars in his travels to New York in the most productive way he could. I have seen no proof he was aware of his personal spending habits on money, but it is undeniable