DBQ-Articles of Confederation

After the American Revolution ended, life in America was different. States reduced the property holding requirement for voting and got rid of primogeniture. The aristocratic leadership was weakened. The Quakers founded the first antislavery society in 1775. Individual states could trade freely with foreign nations. The states also wrote their own constitutions. Even though they were written for separate states, they had a few things in common. They all called for the annual election of legislators …

…the Federalists and the Antifederalists against each other. Federalists were in favor of getting rid of the Articles and adopting something new. Antifederalists would have rather kept the Articles, but rewritten parts of them so that it was to every state’s liking. A series of arguments, the Federalist and the Antifederalist papers, were thrown back and forth. This led to the fall of the Articles of Confederation and the adoption of the Constitution in 1789.