Articles of Confederation
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50 free Articles of Confederation trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Before the Constitution, the United States ran for most of a decade on a looser agreement, written in the middle of a war by people who had just thrown off a king and had no wish to crown a new central authority. The Articles of Confederation gave Congress a long list of duties and very few ways to carry them out, and the story of the 1780s is the story of what happened next. This quiz covers the ground a civics or American history class does: how the Articles were drafted and ratified, what Congress could and could not do, the weaknesses that left the treasury empty and trade in a tangle, the uprising that frightened the founders, the handful of lasting successes, and the changes the framers made when they started again in 1787. It works as a study aid before a test on the founding era, as a ready-made classroom review that can be played or printed, and as a challenge for anyone who wants to know why the first American government had to be replaced. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which British colony did the Articles of Confederation pre-approve to join the union whenever it chose?
Canada
Canada was promised automatic admission by Article XI, an open invitation to the British province of Quebec that was never taken up.
Q 02Which last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation held out until rivals gave up western land claims?
Maryland
Maryland gave in only in February 1781, after Virginia signalled it would cede its vast western territory to Congress. The other twelve states had all ratified two years earlier.
Q 03Shays' Rebellion, the farmers' revolt that discredited the Articles of Confederation, erupted in which state?
Massachusetts
Massachusetts courts were stripping indebted farmers of their land, so armed crowds led by war veteran Daniel Shays forced the courthouses to shut.
Q 04Which two branches of government, both added by the Constitution, did the Articles of Confederation leave out?
Executive and judicial
Executive and judicial powers had no home of their own: there was no president to enforce the laws and no national courts to interpret them, only a one-chamber Congress.
Q 05Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress could only ask the states for funds because it lacked which power?
Levying taxes
Levying taxes stayed with the states, which were sent requests for their share and often failed to pay in full. The other three powers all belonged to Congress.
Q 06What did Congress under the Articles of Confederation ban from the Northwest Territory in its 1787 ordinance?
Slavery
Slavery was barred by the ordinance's sixth article, though the same article let slaveholders reclaim anyone who escaped into the territory from one of the original states.
Q 07Which president's first inaugural address cited the Articles of Confederation to argue no state could secede?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln told the seceding South in 1861 that the Union was 'much older than the Constitution', tracing it back through the Articles to the Continental Association of 1774.
Q 08The insult 'not worth a Continental' mocked which product of a cash-starved Congress during the Revolution?
Paper money
Paper money rolled off the presses until Continental bills sank so low that they stopped passing as currency at all.
Q 09Which blunt motto appears on the Fugio cent, the first coin authorized under the Articles of Confederation?
Mind Your Business
Mind Your Business sits at the bottom of the 1787 copper, under a sun, a sundial and the Latin word Fugio, 'I fly', a reminder to its holders that time is passing.
Q 10Which American envoy in France shrugged off Shays' Rebellion with 'the tree of liberty must be refreshed'?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson went on to say the tree's 'natural manure' was the blood of patriots and tyrants, and he refused to be alarmed by the revolt back home.
Q 11Under the Articles of Confederation, how was voting power in Congress shared between large and small states?
One vote per state
One vote per state gave little Delaware exactly the same weight as Virginia, no matter whether a delegation numbered two members or the maximum of seven.
Q 12States raised trade barriers against one another in the 1780s because the Articles denied Congress which power?
Regulating commerce
Regulating commerce was left to each state, and by September 1786 the rival barriers were bad enough that delegates from five states met to look for a cure.
Q 13Which state's lone veto sank a national tariff, since amending the Articles took every state's consent?
Rhode Island
Q 21Which 'Penman of the Revolution' chaired the committee that first drafted the Articles of Confederation?
John Dickinson
John Dickinson earned the nickname with his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania in the 1760s, and the committee's draft, in his handwriting, went before Congress on July 12, 1776.
Q 22In which Pennsylvania town, its refuge while the British held Philadelphia, did Congress adopt the Articles in 1777?
York
York sheltered Congress from September 1777 to June 1778, and the town now styles itself the first capital of the United States, a title historians dispute.
Q 23Article III of the Articles of Confederation described the bond between the states as a 'firm' what?
League of friendship
Rhode Island said no and the tariff died, leaving Congress without customs revenue. In 1787 it was also the only state that sent nobody to the Philadelphia Convention.
Q 14How many of the 13 states had to agree before Congress under the Articles could declare war or make treaties?
Nine
Nine states, more than a two-thirds majority, had to back every major decision, and with delegations often missing from the chamber that bar was hard to reach.
Q 15With Congress too broke to raise troops against Shays' Rebellion, who paid for the army that crushed it?
Wealthy merchants
Wealthy merchants, more than 125 of them, put up over £6,000 to field about 3,000 militiamen, a private army standing in for the one the nation could not afford.
Q 16What were Daniel Shays and his followers trying to capture when they marched on Springfield in January 1787?
The federal armory
The federal armory held the weapons the rebels wanted, but its defenders answered with two cannon firing grapeshot, killing four men and scattering the rest.
Q 17Why did the 1783 peace treaty with Britain sit unratified for months in Congress under the Articles?
Too few delegates showed up
Too few delegates showed up to make a quorum, and Congress had no way to force attendance: rarely were more than half of its sixty or so members in the room.
Q 18Under the Articles of Confederation, who controlled how delegates to Congress were appointed and could recall them?
State legislatures
State legislatures settled how delegates were named each year, and every state paid its own, so members of Congress answered to their home governments rather than to voters.
Q 19Which limit on members of Congress appeared in the Articles of Confederation but not in the Constitution?
Term limits
Term limits kept any delegate to three years of service in every six, a rotation rule that the Philadelphia Convention chose to drop.
Q 20Under the Articles of Confederation, each state's share of national expenses was meant to reflect what?
Its land values
Its land values, buildings and improvements included, were to set each state's bill under Article VIII. A 1783 amendment to switch the yardstick to population fell two states short.
League of friendship was meant literally: the states stayed sovereign and joined hands only for common defense, the security of their liberties and their general welfare.
Q 24The full title of America's first constitution is 'Articles of Confederation and' which two-word phrase?
Perpetual Union
Perpetual Union was a promise as well as a title: the last article declared that 'the Union shall be perpetual', yet the whole arrangement was replaced eight years after it took effect.
Q 25The Articles of Confederation took effect in March 1781, months before which decisive siege of the Revolution?
Yorktown
Yorktown fell that October, so a charter Congress had been following informally since 1777 was legally in force only for the war's last major land campaign.
Q 26Whose June 1776 resolution urged Congress to break with Britain, seek foreign allies and plan a confederation?
Richard Henry Lee
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia packed all three demands into one motion on June 7, and Congress answered by creating three committees, one for each task.
Q 27The committee to draft the Articles of Confederation was named a day after the committee to write what?
Declaration of Independence
Declaration of Independence drafters, the Committee of Five, were appointed on June 11, 1776. The next day a committee of thirteen, one member per colony, got the confederation job.
Q 28Which Connecticut delegate alone signed all four great state papers, the Articles of Confederation among them?
Roger Sherman
Roger Sherman, who started out as a shoemaker, put his name to the Continental Association of 1774, the 1776 declaration, the Articles and the Constitution.
Q 29Which president of Congress under the Articles is sometimes wrongly called the first US president?
John Hanson
John Hanson was the first to serve the full one-year term the Articles laid down, but he merely chaired Congress and held none of the powers of the later presidency.
Q 30Which 'Financier of the Revolution' did Congress appoint as its Superintendent of Finance in 1781?
Robert Morris
Robert Morris also persuaded Congress to charter the Bank of North America, the first chartered bank in the United States, then resigned in 1784, frustrated by the government's weakness.