Articles of Confederation ratified

On March 1, 1781, Maryland delegates signed the Articles of Confederation in Philadelphia, allowing the Articles to take effect as the first national frame of government for the United States. Samuel Huntington presided in the Continental Congress when Maryland finally completed ratification after long disputes over western land claims. The ratification gave Congress a legal structure for conducting the Revolutionary War and managing diplomacy under a formal union.

The Articles resolved the immediate political need for a lawful national government, but they also preserved a strong commitment to state sovereignty that limited congressional power. Congress could direct the war and negotiate abroad, yet it still depended on state requisitions for men, money, and supplies. The March 1781 settlement therefore intensified the tension between national coordination and state independence at the very moment the war still had to be won.

The Confederation Congress under the Articles directed the final campaigns of the war and later negotiated the Treaty of Paris of 1783. The weaknesses exposed under the Articles after 1781 also fed directly into the Annapolis Convention of 1786 and the Constitutional Convention of 1787.