Should we have stayed with the Articles of Confederation?

Paul Newkirk –

The AOC document failed to provide for a functioning central Government, and that was its basic downfall. But it did make some tremendous contributions.

The single most significant achievement of the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” is that it is the instrument by which the separate and sovereign States welded themselves together perpetually into one single Country. People could now refer to themselves as Americans, and it now had a legal meaning rather than just a nickname.

However, since the primary governmental sovereignty stayed with the States, the AOC provided very little structure for the Country to develop any unity of purpose or action. The States continued to put their own interests first, relative to all of the other States.

After trying to function for a dozen years or so with this impractical situation, they amended, updated, and superseded nearly all of the provisions of the AOC, one at a time, and gathered the results into a new Constitution.  *Nearly* all provisions. But most definitely, not all of them.

Two provisions of the AOC were left in place, and remain so, to this day:

1.) The fact of the Perpetual Union, and

2.) The actual provision establishing the name of the Country.

Both of those items were already in existence, and there was no need to re-create them, even though all of the other provisions had been superseded. Which is why these two items are NOT found to be officially established within the Constitution.

And no; the Preamble does not “establish” anything at allIt is merely an introduction, with a list of goals.  [EDIT:]  But it DID note that the people entity, “We the people” as the sovereign of the Country, had produced this Constitution, and that IT was the ultimate arbiter of American governance, rather than the States.

And no, contrary to popular myth, the AOC was NOT cancelled in its entirety upon adoption of the new Constitution. There is not one single word, anywhere, which would have that effect. Not one. It did not happen.

The most salient change established by the Constitution was:

1.) to vest the primary national sovereignty of the Country, with The People, and

2.) to vest the secondary national sovereignty, with the Constitution and its central Government, and

3.) to vest/confirm the tertiary level of sovereignty with the State Governments, within their own States.

The end result was a functional Country, rather than a club of States.