Articles of Confederation

[ ahr-ti-kuhlz uhv kuhn-fed-uh-rey-shuhn ]

noun

, (used with a plural verb)

1. the first constitution of the 13 American states, adopted in 1781 and replaced in 1789 by the Constitution of the United States.

Articles of Confederation

plural noun

1. the agreement made by the original 13 states in 1777 establishing a confederacy to be known as the United States of America; replaced by the Constitution of 1788

Articles of Confederation

1. An agreement among the thirteen original states, approved in 1781, that provided a loose federal government before the present Constitution went into effect in 1789. There was no chief executive or judiciary, and the legislature of the Confederation had no authority to collect taxes.

Example Sentences

Washington also saw America’s governing framework of supreme law change from the clumsy Articles of Confederation to the less clumsy Constitution, a do-over with a 235-year track record, but still a do-over capable of being done over itself.

From Slate

Washington was asked by his beloved Virginia to take part in a convention charged with revising the Articles of Confederation, the first American constitution.

From Literature

It’s worth noting that the Articles of Confederation were explicitly perpetual — no state could leave on its own.

From Salon

The argument Radan claims to address is “that the union created by the Articles of Confederation that the Union replaced was expressly perpetual, and this was ‘most conclusive’ that the Constitution’s Union was also perpetual.”

From Salon

The document’s preamble twice describes itself as “articles of Confederation and perpetual Union,” phrasing that was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin, and the phrase “perpetual union” appears several more times in the text, as if to hammer that home.

From Salon