Confederation And Constitution Of The United States

Essay, Research Paper

The Central Government

The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution are both alike

and different in some ways. Let’s start out with the similarities. Firstly,

both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution have a Legislative

Branch of Government and a Congress. Secondly, they both made changes to the

government before them. In this, I mean that when the Articles of Confederation

were being written, they used the English Government as a base, and improved

from there. They didn’t want the president to be too powerful, like the king.

The Constitution made changes to the Articles of Confederation by making a

stronger government, rather than a weaker one. Thirdly, both governments had

the power to coin money, but the Articles of Confederation didn’t use that power.

Now let’s get to the differences. For one thing, under the Articles

of Confederation, you must need a unanomous vote under all states to make an

amendment, while in the Constitution, you only needed a majority of two

thirds of the Senate and the House of Representatives to pass it. For another,

under the Articles of Confederation, each state in congress had only one vote,

while under the constitution, the states had two votes in the senate, (where

every state is equal) and one vote per representative in the house of

representatives (where the states had representatives according to population).

And for the last thing, under the Constitution, the government could regulate

trade, make laws, and the states were more like one firm union of states.

Under the Articles of Confederation, it was competely the opposite.