Editing Articles of Confederation (section)

===Army===
Under the Articles, Congress had the authority to regulate and fund the [[Continental Army]], but it lacked the power to compel the States to comply with requests for either troops or funding. This left the military vulnerable to inadequate funding, supplies, and even food.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Carp |first=E. Wayne |title=To Starve the Army at Pleasure: Continental Army Administration and American Political Culture, 1775–1783 |date=1980 |publisher=[[UNC Press Books]] |isbn=9780807842690}}</ref> Further, although the Articles enabled the states to present a unified front when dealing with the European powers, as a tool to build a centralized war-making government, they were largely a failure; Historian Bruce Chadwick wrote:

{{Blockquote|George Washington had been one of the very first proponents of a strong federal government. The army had nearly disbanded on several occasions during the winters of the war because of the weaknesses of the Continental Congress. ... The delegates could not draft soldiers and had to send requests for regular troops and militia to the states. Congress had the right to order the production and purchase of provisions for the soldiers, but could not force anyone to supply them, and the army nearly starved in several winters of war.{{sfn|Chadwick|2005|p=469}}}}

Phelps wrote:
{{Blockquote|It is hardly surprising, given their painful confrontations with a weak central government and the sovereign states, that the former generals of the Revolution as well as countless lesser officers strongly supported the creation of a more muscular union in the 1780s and fought hard for the ratification of the Constitution in 1787. Their wartime experiences had nationalized them.{{sfn|Phelps|2001|pp=165–66}}}}

The Continental Congress, before the Articles were approved, had promised soldiers a pension of half pay for life. However Congress had no power to compel the states to fund this obligation, and as the war wound down after the victory at Yorktown the sense of urgency to support the military was no longer a factor. No progress was made in Congress during the winter of 1783–84. General [[Henry Knox]], who would later become the first [[Secretary of War]] under the Constitution, blamed the weaknesses of the Articles for the inability of the government to fund the army. The army had long been supportive of a strong union.{{sfn|Puls|2008|pp=174–76}}

Knox wrote:
{{Blockquote|The army generally have always reprobated the idea of being thirteen armies. Their ardent desires have been to be one continental body looking up to one sovereign. ... It is a favorite toast in the army, "A hoop to the barrel" or "Cement to the Union".{{sfn|Puls|2008|p=177}}}}

As Congress failed to act on the petitions, Knox wrote to Gouverneur Morris, four years before the Philadelphia Convention was convened, "As the present Constitution is so defective, why do not you great men call the people together and tell them so; that is, to have a convention of the States to form a better Constitution."{{sfn|Puls|2008|p=177}}

Once the war had been won, the [[Continental Army]] was largely disbanded. A very small [[First American Regiment|national force]] was maintained to man the frontier forts and to protect against [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]] attacks. Meanwhile, each of the states had an army (or militia), and 11 of them had navies. The wartime promises of bounties and land grants to be paid for service were not being met. In 1783, [[George Washington]] defused the [[Newburgh conspiracy]], but riots by unpaid [[Pennsylvania]] veterans forced Congress to leave Philadelphia temporarily.{{sfn|Lodge|1893|p=98}}

The Congress from time to time during the Revolutionary War requisitioned troops from the states. Any contributions were voluntary, and in the debates of 1788, the Federalists (who supported the proposed new Constitution) claimed that state politicians acted unilaterally, and contributed when the Continental army protected their state's interests. The Anti-Federalists claimed that state politicians understood their duty to the Union and contributed to advance its needs. Dougherty (2009) concludes that generally the States' behavior validated the Federalist analysis. This helps explain why the Articles of Confederation needed reforms.{{sfn|Dougherty|2009|pp=47–74}}