In 1781, the Articles of Confederation were ratified and the American experiment commenced. The Framers feared that a large, centralized government, like those in Europe, would be more prone to corruption and would threaten the sovereignty and rights of individual states and their citizens. To combat this fear, the Articles of Confederation created a weak central government and delegated most authority to the various states. This decentralization of power, however, would prove to cause more problems than it solved as states struggled to pay war debts and came increasingly into more conflict with each other. In this lesson, students will explore two different versions of the Articles of Confederations and contrast them with each other while critically analyzing the document itself to identify its strengths and weakness. The lesson culminates in an essay-driven question that involves synthesizing, interacting, inferring, and interpreting primary source material and has the students use contextual evidence from both the draft and final version of the Articles of Confederation to articulate their own conclusions.