The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Second Continental congress on this day in 1777. They were not ratified until March 1, 1781, when Maryland became the last State to ratify.
In the short period between ratification, the war’s ending, and 1786, relations between States eroded to the point where our Founder’s began calling for a convention to correct the issues in the Articles. In 1787 they succeeded in having a convention. That convention wrote a new Constitution and proposed that it be ratified by State conventions, thereby circumventing the unanimous agreement requirement in the Articles of Confederation for any changes to that constitution. U.S. Constitution was ratified June 21,1788.
After declaring independence from British rule, the States each became sovereign nation states. But the Founders understood that they needed some unity of action to succeed in their war for independence and their attempts to gain recognition from other countries.
Previous attempts at unifying the governments in America, such as the Albany Plan, had failed as the various governing powers did not want to lose any authority to any other government. The idea of giving power to a new central government while fighting to achieve independence from the current central government was repugnant to many.
The Second Continental Congress created a committee of one representative from each colony to create a form that the new “national” government would take. The primary writer of the Articles of Confederation was John Dickinson, a delegate from Delaware. After much debate and alterations, the Articles were adopted by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777.