Articles of Confederation vs. The Constitution

It's rather difficult to compare the two entities, because of the nature of their origins. The Articles of Confederation were the more or less accidental product of a series of events over a rather extended period of time. The Stamp Act Congress met in late 1765, with delegates from nine colonies, to discuss how to respond to the Stamp Act, and to organize committees of correspondence with which to coordinate the resistance to what was seen as an intolerable exercise of power on the part of Parliament.

The Stamp Act Congress was seen as having been effective, because Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. However, the reality was more likely that the effective use of committees of correspondence lead to an effective boycott of goods from England (local people were needed to convince merchants not to profit from the embargo, and the correspondence committees were need to assure local merchants that merchants in other colonies would not profit while they observed the embargo). Parliament also passed at the same time as they repealed the Stamp Act a measure called the Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament was legally competent to legislate in all matters whatsoever for the colonies. The argument in the colonies was that Parliament had the right to legislate in imperial matters, but that they could not be taxed without their consent--Parliament retorted that the colonists were "virtually" represented in Parliament.

As relations deteriorated, Parliament responded with more and pugnacious assertion of their rights and power, and less and less understanding and compromise, which finally resulted in the Boston Port Act, and a series of revenue and "law and order" acts known in the aggregate to the colonists as the "Intolerable Acts." Taking their cue from the Stamp Act Congress of nine years earlier, the First Continental Congress was convened in late 1774. This Congress was convened by the committees of correspondence, which had remained in existence and active during the debate about Parliamentary powers and colonial rights after the repeal of the Stamp Act. The passage of the Declaratory Act served to keep the pot on the boil, when without it, the repeal of the Stamp Act would likely have defused an ugly situation--the Declaratory Act kept things ugly.

The First Continental Congress had twelve colonies present, and invited Georgia and the colonies in Canada to attend a Second Continental Congress to be convened in the spring of 1775. It quickly and effectively organized another boycott of goods from England, and exports to England, as had been done in 1765--but it would prove meaningless. In the event, only Georgia responded, and by May, 1775, open warfare had already broken out due to the firefights at Lexington and Concord, and the long running gun battle the colonists fought with the "red coats" as they marched back to Boston.

So, the Second Continental Congress became a governing body, although never intended to be one. It had equal representation, which meant that the "small" colonies, such as New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, and other colonies with small populations, had the same vote as the "large" colonies--Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. It took over six years to write the Articles of Confederation, which cobbled together in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, and of mistrust for centralized authority. The equal respresentation was preserved, because in the situation, nothing different could have been created. There was absolutely no provision for an independent executive with real power. It was a "headless" government in that regard.

The Confederation was a failure--it failed to provide the troops the army needed, and Washington's army limped along, rarely able to challenge the English in the open field. It failed to pay the army, which would leave resentments and ugly political legacies well into the succeeding century (see the Society of the Cincinnati). It failed to adquately clother and feed the army, which gave Washington huge head aches, and often saw some of his best officers serving as commissaries and quarter masters rather than leading troops in the field. It completely failed to establish true national sovereignty, which meant that after the conclusion of the revolution, the individual colonies were now truly sovereign states, enjoying the power of nations, but lacking the wherewithal to assert national sovereignty, and bereft of the power which true unity would provide them.

The Constitutional Convention intended to solve the problems which everyone knew was inherent in the ineffective Articles of Confederation. I don't intend to go into a description of the course of the convention, but it was unique in history to that date. It created a national government from scratch, and almost completely without reference to previously existing institutions. The creation of the Senate had nothing to do with imitating the House of Lords; the relegation of the right to originate money bills to the House of Representatives derived from the proportional representation there, given that it was assumed that revenues would (more or less) be proportionately received.

Whether or not one is correct in discussing the "values" of the nation, i won't go into--but only observe that an obsession with values is a late twentieth century phenomenon in the United States. The Constitution certainly does better provide for the needs of the nation, which is why it was promulgated in the first place.

I think it is completely false to assert that interest groups emerged during the drafting of the Constitution, other than to note the alliance of small states calling for equal representation by states and large states calling for proportional representation--and those were not true interst groups, because alliances shitfted when the topic shifted from the basis for representation.

Federalists only appear after the Constitution is completed and sent to the states for ratification--and a segment of the poltiical population wanted to see it approved. "Anti-federalist" is a name given to the opposition to the ratification by their Federalist opponents, and it was a clever bit of propaganda--it portrayed them as being against something, rather than for something. These were not interest groups, either, in my opinion, as there were mercantiles interest who supported the constitution and who opposed it, and landed interests who supported the constitution and who opposed it. Political parties and factions did not really exist then, except for local faction, and national factions only slowly emerged after the constitution was written and had been sent for ratification.

One of the problems you have is in talking about Federalists as an existant faction during the drafting of the constitution. The document can hardly be said to benefit a group which did not yet exist. Those who opposed ratification opposed it largely because they opposed a strong central government, although many opposed it because it lacked a bill of rights, which the Federalists promised would be the first order of business of the Congress if the document were ratified (which was the case).

It is huge anachronism to see nationally based interest groups in play before the constitution was actually drafted and sent for raftification.

As for whether or not the constitution addressed adequately addressed the problems which were seen as inherent in the Articles of Confederation, that rather begs the question. That was the purpose of the convention, and had it not done so, it is unlikely that the constitution would have been ratified. When the constitution had finally been drafted, and sent for ratification, then a great many ideas arose in the minds of members of the public, many (perhaps most) of whom had never given as detailed consideration the the issues of governance as did the delegates to the convention.