Articles of Confederation, March, 1781 (I.1.7)

Finished in 1777 by a committee led by John Dickinson, the articles would establish a United States of America without as strongly centralized a government as the one that later took form. "Each state retains its sovereignty," save for a few powers specified in the document as retained by the Congress. The states would come to each other's defense. They would allow a citizen of each free passage in and out of the others. The states' criminal justice and court systems would cooperate with one another.

Each state would send from two to seven Congressmen to Congress, and each state would have one vote in Congress. In Congress they would have freedom of speech and debate.

No state would have the right to make treaties, alliances, or trade agreements without the consent of Congress.

The states would pay the cost of their common security by contributing money proportionately to the value of their land. There would be no direct taxation of the individual by the central government. This seems to me to be the key sense in which power was less decentralized under this document than it eventually came to be. Without national individual taxation, central power would be stunted. The indirect route by which it would be raised would be more deliberative and therefore less confiscatory. Without sufficient money, there is no great power. I don't mean to imply that the Constitution of the United States that was ratified a few years later was any less anti-centralization in this sense. But it established a larger centralized government; such a thing requires money.

In any event, the document says that Congress would retain authority to set foreign policy, including war, to settle disputes between states, to set currency values, to regulate trade, to establish a post office, to borrow money on the credit of the United States, and to establish a military. But only if nine states assented to it could any policy be set in any of these areas.

Also, Canada was offered admission into the union; other states could be admitted if at least nine states consented.