The decisive limitation was often the machinery behind the decision. Congress could authorize borrowing, but repayment depended on revenue supplied through state requisitions. It could negotiate a treaty, but it lacked a general executive establishment and federal court system capable of securing uniform compliance throughout the states. It could ask states to provide troops, yet it did not possess the later federal government's direct institutional reach. Formal authority answers whether Congress was assigned a responsibility; implementation capacity asks whether it controlled the money, personnel, and enforcement needed to perform that responsibility reliably. Confusing those two questions produces the false claim that Congress either had no power or had all the tools it needed.

The Confederation also achieved lasting results. It helped carry the nation through the final years of the Revolution, conducted diplomacy, and participated in the peace settlement that confirmed American independence. Western-land policy was especially important. The Land Ordinance of 1785 established an orderly survey-and-sale system for western public lands. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 created a territorial government north and west of the Ohio River, described a path by which territories could become states equal to the original thirteen, protected specified civil and religious liberties, and prohibited slavery in the territory while also recognizing the return of persons escaping from labor. These measures converted disputed western claims into an organized national process and helped prevent the original states from treating new states as permanent dependencies.

Success in the West does not erase fiscal or commercial weakness. Territorial policy worked because states had ceded claims and Congress could legislate for land under national control. Collecting revenue from people within existing states or imposing a uniform rule on commerce among those states required powers and institutions the Articles did not provide. The correct evaluation is therefore mixed: the Confederation Congress could govern effectively in some assigned fields, especially when interests aligned or national property was involved, but it remained dependent when implementation required sustained state cooperation. On a test, identify both the power exercised and the mechanism that made success or failure possible.

Video lesson: The ARTICLES of CONFEDERATION, Explained [AP Government Foundational Documents]