Preamble to the United States Constitution
However, the Articles of Confederation were all about the states' rights.  At that time, many people were afraid of having a federal government that was too strong.  These people were called anti-federalists.  They included some of the Founding Fathers, like Patrick Henry and James Monroe.  The anti-federalists worried that a strong federal government could become tyrannical and take away the rights of individual states, like they thought the British colonial government had done.  They also worried that a government ruled by a President might turn into a monarchy, where the President would become a King and have total power. Because of these worries, the Articles of Confederation talked all about states' rights, and not about individual people's rights. The framers wanted to establish these rights for the people of the United States and their "posterity" meaning all the generations of Americans who would follow.