Articles Of Confederation

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two to seven delegates from each state; each state had one vote, according to its size or population. No executive or judicial branches were provided for. Congress was charged with responsibility for conducting foreign relations, declaring war or peace, maintaining an army and navy, settling boundary disputes, establishing and maintaining a postal service, and various lesser functions. Some of these responsibilities were shared with the states, and in one way or another Congress was dependent upon the cooperation of the states for carrying out any of them.
Four visible weaknesses of the articles, apart from those of organization, made it impossible for Congress to execute its constitutional duties. These were analyzed in numbers 15-22 of The FEDERALIST, the political essays in which Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay argued the case for the U.S. CONSTITUTION of 1787. The first weakness was that Congress could legislate only for states, not for ...

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