Defending the Articles of Confederation is tricky, but doable. There were only a few things that the Articles did right, but they did them very well. First of all, they were able to give more power to the states. By giving more power to the states, there was more diversity in the laws that were made and it kept the central government from being too powerful. The people at the time were just coming from a country where the head of the central government had abused his power to get what they wanted, and they didn't want that to happen again. Thus they gave more power to the states. This made sense at the time and was a common theme throughout the entire document. The other thing that the Articles of Confederation government did was separate land in the Northwest Territory. The government split the new land into large squares that could contain smaller squares, and smaller squares inside them. They were able to sell these "sections" for a good price, and in a good way. The government was also incredibly ahead of its time and set aside a part of each section for education. This was all way ahead of its time, and the system was so good and ingenious that parts of it are sometimes still used today in certain areas.
Part 2:
Showing what the Articles of Confederation did wrong is much easier than showing what it did right. By giving states more rights, the central government became weak and unable to do anything. It was unable to raise taxes, raise an army, and do several other basic things that it needed to do, and as a result, it slowly became more and more useless over time. The Articles of Confederation only had a single Congress, with no checks and balances, thus leaving the government more open to corruption and abuse of power. By not having specific branches of government that would limit each other and keep each other in check, the government became weaker and more opinionated to the majority.
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