The Articles of Confederation were the first US legal-political guidelines. It was from the ratification of these articles that on March 1, 1781, the first American political institution was formed: the Congress of the Confederation, or Joint Congress of the United States.
The problem with these articles is that they gave states a great deal of power and weakened the sovereignty of a central government. The result was that the Confederation Congress proved to be a fragile institution and unable to coordinate and harmonize the differences between the former colonies (which were now the states). To change the situation, some leading leaders of the time, such as James Madison, proposed the creation of a Constitutional Convention to draft the Constitution and ratify a new system.
