Essay on Shay's Rebellion

After the war, America was a chaotic place. Although there was the Article of Confederation, America’s system of government was incomplete. A lot of problems existed and people were revolting. Of all those revolts, two were significant, the Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion. The Shay’s Rebellion happened in 1786, when there was an economy crisis and the local courts started to shut down the farms. The Whiskey Rebellion happened in 1791, when the government imposed taxes on the whiskey. Although both of the revolts were crashed down, they changed the government. After the Whiskey and the Shay’s Rebellion, people promoted a stronger federal government, precedent of obeying the law was set and it had shown that the executive would act to execute the law.

Unfortunately for the National Government, Congress did not have any power to collect taxes from people in each individual state. The Congress could ask for money, but could not by any mean force states to pay them. The National Government greatly needed money to cover expenses and debts. Congress could not pay the Nation’s debt, which meant they could not provide much needed

(5) In Massachusetts, Daniel Shay led many farmers who were in debt to the courthouse to protest. Many of these farmers had fought in the war and when they came back they were in debt from all the taxes. This was later known as Shay’s Rebellion and since these farmers were in almost every state, state officials were afraid that this uprising would spread. Because of Shay’s Rebellion, the officials wanted to preclude further rebellion from occurring throughout the states. For if it did up rise, they knew their government would look even more unstable from other countries point of view. George Washington’s repartee was that their enemies would be happy to see that they were not able to govern themselves.

There were many rebellions in the United States history, some peaceful and some violent. Shays' Rebellion in 1786 and the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 are examples of two brutal rebellions that led to death of many innocent people. Rebellions can develop due to many conditions including unfair laws, unfair treatment, and a disagreement over a sensitive topic. The Shays' Rebellion showed the Articles of Confederation was too weak, while the Whiskey Rebellion proved the Constitution to be a strong framework of government.

The actions of the members of the Shay’s Rebellion were justified because state officials took their land, to pay their own debt. Shay’s Rebellion was a fight against government control. The country after the Revolutionary War was severely damaged especially in the trade market. The British cut off trades in the West Indies market crippling the economy. Due to the poor economy the farmers had difficulty selling their products and being able to pay the money requested to the government to pay off their war debts. This enabled the states to take the farmers’ land to pay the state's debts. Shay’s Rebellion, although dangerous the rebellion wanted to force the government to making their own money and create new policies in order to pay off the

In the book “Shays’ Rebellion: Authority and Distress in Post-revolutionary America”, Sean Condon shows us his outlook on how he saw post-revolutionary America to be within the late 1770’s and 1780’s. This book was released in 2015 by John Hopkins University Press, and was also made in a continuing book series by Peter Charles Hoffer and Willamjames Hull Hofer called Witness to History. The story takes us "Throughout the late summer and fall of 1786, farmers in central and western Massachusetts organized themselves into armed groups to protest against established authority and aggressive creditors. Calling themselves "regulators" or the "voice of the people.”” [1] Condon succeeds by prosing an appealing idea in an upfront style that shapes

Recently, something has been going on, Shays’ Rebellion. To those who don’t know what it is, it is a series of protests against tax collections and judgments for debt. Named after and led by Daniel Shays, these protests have been going on for a while. About two months, to be exact. All about the states, from New Hampshire to South Carolina, farmers were taking up arms in protest. However, in Massachusetts, the rebellion was the most serious, because farmers were threatened with the loss of their farms due to high taxes, bad harvests, and economic depression. As the recession deepened, communities throughout Massachusetts petitioned the State legislature for fiscal relief. Thousands marched to shut down courts they believed betrayed the principles

The states were in huge national debt to foreign nations and influential private citizens. Wealthy Americans and foreign nations loaned money to America for the Revolutionary War that summed up to about millions of dollars. Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of Treasury, was in charge of strengthening the national government. Hamilton introduced the idea assuming all debts. This caused the Southern States to be enraged because most of them had already paid off their debt, and did not want to pay taxes to pay off the debt of Northern States. The states did not pay the taxes because the Articles of Confederation could not tell the state what to do. Alexander Hamilton proposed a Bank of America that would collect taxes and would be funded by U.S.

Daniel Shays’ participated in wars early on in his life, but eventually settled in Pelham, Massachusetts, and owned about 250 acres of farmland. Continued financial difficulties from the war led Shays to sell over half the farmland, and later being sued for unpaid debts and had much difficulty in meeting his obligations. A prodigious amount of farmers in Massachusetts during this time were going through similar financial hardships; because of the Massachusetts legislature attempting to pay off its state’s war debts, they used hard taxation policies, causing situations to become worse. People petitioned for better relief and reforms but none came, the legislature in Massachusetts ignoring the fact that their citizens are petitioning and sending them resolutions to fix this problem. This led to the rebellion of the farmers against the government: Shays’ Rebellion.

Thomas Jefferson believed the Shay’s Rebellion was a very significant event. In the year 1787, he wrote a letter, conveying his idea of rebellions. “Yet where does this anarchy exist?” a line written in Jefferson’s letter. This tells us his idea of Shay’s rebellion. From this one line we can conclude that he does not believe there is a real chaos going on. “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.” What he means by this is that rebellions sometimes do need to happen. It makes up what helps us learn and improve. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” When he says this he means that sacrifices have to be made in order for us to

First of all, the colonists were angered by King George’s rule of tyranny on the American colonies. Specifically, the British Parliament

Prologue: A Revolutionary People 1. What sorts of resistance to government occurred in Massachusetts in the 1770s? Compare this activity to the actions of the Massachusetts Regulators in 1786-87. In what ways are they similar? In what ways do they differ?

It was said that if the government did not have the consent of the governed then it must rebel and overpower the government and that was what the farmers in Massachusetts did in response to the huge economic crisis of the 1780s. It was Shay’s Rebellion which started by a large group of farmers and angry people in Massachusetts in 1787 as a protest to the injustices that they thought were created by the wealthy elite establishment, and the political elite in the state government that seemed to be working together with the wealthy’s interests.They felt like courts favored only the wealthy elite and they thought that they weren't being heard in this new government.There was a policy passed by the legislatures that put farmers in debt.There was

Shay’s Rebellion went too far with the whole thing. Going against a government choice is

The United States struggled from a very high amount of debt because of the Revolutionary War. A Federalist, Secretary Hamilton encouraged an amplification in federal authority. He was planning to use the excise tax to lessen this financial