The Aftermath Of Shay 's Rebellion

Thus creating the document which gave little to no respect and power to the central government to intervene when rebellions and riots began to occur. Under the articles almost all the states in the union were in serious debts and had currency that were worth nothing. With what we may call a recession today, rebellions began to rise to fight mainly the tax appointment that was putting many citizens in deep debt. One of the famous rebellions, Shays rebellion, was what many see as the last straw before having to reassemble and create a new constitution. With the problems form the articles five states met together in September 1786 to discuss trading problems but slowly transitioning to talk about how to improve the country’s well being. The men at this conference then went about to invite all the states representatives to a conference to discuss the revise the constitution. The invitation to this constitution began to show the divide in the peoples opinion and what further would be seen as political parties. Some of the states saw the constitutional convention as a conspiracy to create a central government with too much power, while other states felt that it was necessary with all the chaos that was occurring without one. With the ratification process finally beginning concerns were voiced; namely how to develop the structure of development, 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

Shay's Rebellion struck fear in to the collective souls of the conservative ruling elite, because it demonstrated that the will of the people was a bit more powerful than they were comfortable with (Faragher, Buhle, Czitrom, and Armitage, 2009, p. 182). They viewed such actions of dissent as a sign that there was too much democracy in the New World and argued in favor of a strong national government able to protect property and the rights of citizens. The idea of a strong federal government therefore gained considerable support after Shay's Rebellion and a Constitutional Convention was convened in 1787 that would attempt to address these shortcomings through a few amendments. However, what the Confederation Congress and the rest of the nation were unaware that the actual agenda of the Convention was to create a powerful centralized government by hammering out a new Constitution (Faragher, Buhle, Czitrom, and Armitage, 2009, p. 184).

The Revolution was a tumultuous time for the American colonies; in fact, for much of the war, the acting government made decisions without the unanimous approval of the people (Schultz, 2014). Although, this was necessary the realization that a government of the people with written boundaries was vital to its growth. Consequently, to remedy this need the Articles of Confederation were developed in 1777, and finally were unanimously passed in 1781. These articles were intended to enact an effective governing body, but the manner in which it was written restricted its abilities instead allowing the states to retain the majority of power. Additionally, the job of the national government was to; initiate or conclude wars, supervise the Indians in the west, the creation of a national legal tender, and establishing provisions for national mail transport (Schultz, 2009). Even though the Articles were well

The actions of the members of Shay’s Rebellion are justified. In the beginning, state officials seized farmers’ lands because they could not pay war debts. This was unfair, as farmers did not take part in the war at all. This ended many farmers in jail, and took away their rights as american citizens. This is what started many protests, which turned into revolt. The first action they took was forcing a courthouse to shut down so farmers couldn’t lose more land. This was definitely a reasonable response compared to what had been happening to them. After this, they proceeded to a jail in Springfield, where they freed imprisoned farmers. While it was even more rebellious than the courthouse event, it's still justified. This group of people were

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was begun, in part, due to Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts. This rebellion illustrated the difficulty of having a unified nation when the country consists of powerful state governments with a weak central government. In order to change this delegates from each of the thirteen states with the exception of Rhode Island met to convene on and debate the issues that were plaguing the divided nation. However, it was the divisions of the country that nearly caused the convention to go down as a failure. For example, Edmund Randolph and George Mason were so discontented with what the Constitution was turning out to be, that they demanded that there be a second convention that would allow states the opportunity

This essay will examine why the Articles of Confederation; the first national compact that had executive branch and legislative branch with limited national government power, failed to solve national problems, inflation, depression. After the American Revolution, Americans were very suspicious with a strong central government, as they think the United State government would control over tariff and limited human rights just like what Great Britain had done in the past. On July of 1776, John Dickinson submitted a blueprint for a strong national government to the Continental Congress, however, his colleagues transformed his plan into a government that needs the state’s authority to execute any taxes, laws, or amendments. Since the national government holds very little power, this created many conflicts such as tariffs, lack of finances to maintain the army, no power to end rebellions. It was impossible for the Article of Confederation to solve any postwar problems that America was facing at that time due to high unemployed sailors, debt-ridden farmers, and destitute widows and orphans.

Shays' Rebellion did have large impact on many of the farmers during that time. Many farms who did rebel suffered from high debt. This led to many people losing their property and being thrown into jail because of their unpaid debt. Therefore, I do believe Shay had a great impact because of his power to lead thousands of people to rebel and put their wealth and live on the

Would you call the Shays’ followers rebels or freedom fighters? Shay’s rebellion was about American farmers making a riot against state and local enforcement because they couldn’t pay taxes. Although many will argue that they were freedom fighters , nevertheless they were rebels because they wasted their money, they are persuading and convincing other men with false ideas, also they want the break the foundation and demolish the main or central idea of the country.

The Articles of the Confederation was festering to a boil without a centralized strength. Interstate conflict would have ripped the United States apart. As such, a new government was needed; one with the ability generate funds, protect all of the people on a unified front, and defend itself. It meant hobbling the individual states’ rights and increasing the legislative power of what became the executive branches. The Constitution was a necessary evil if the states were not to slip into attrition through the abuses of their individual legislative power. The United States was founded on credit and the lenders needed to be repaid as well as a system made that would not rely on the good will and needs of corrupt men. “Too much democracy” in local or state government eroded the rights of

Looking back in history (1781-1787) at the debate over ratification of the Constitution we can see that the making of the constitution was a long drawn out battle between the federalists and the Anti-Federalists. There were concerns as to the inherent weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, such as the lack of action during Shay’s Rebellion, the issue over taxation, as well as the problematic consensus required by all states to change any one of the Articles. There was a fear that if given too much power the executive leader would become like the king they had just fought a revolution to free themselves from. This fear of giving too much power to a centralized government was what made the Articles so weak. The purpose of this paper is

When the Constitution was signed, it replaced the previous government plan, The Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation were unsatisfactory. They created what Alexander Hamilton described as “an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government.” (Library of Congress). After the incident of Shays’ Rebellion, many politically involved figures thought that a new plan of government was needed.

While a great number of democratic governments from all over the world inevitably succumbed beneath the grasp of a despot, there one country that was able to elude a tyrant in its government by shielding against such corruption. During the period of May 25, 1787 to September 17, 1887, fifty-five US delegates convened in Philadelphia to write the Constitution of the United States of America, which was a new form of government that would replace the United States’ earliest government called the Articles of Confederation. As a young nation, the scrappy American country witnessed the futility in the Articles of Confederation to which it did a poor job in granting the national government with sufficient authority. This resulted with catastrophic displays of disharmony and negligence of government demands in the country, in which was mostly manifested in Shay 's Rebellion of 1787. Consequently, American politicians understood how feeble the Articles of Confederation were in establishing order; they knew that the weak government would eventually lead them to anarchy. Nonetheless, as much the country needed a stronger enforcer of laws, the framers of the Constitution also took into consideration the possibility for tyranny to infiltrate their government. It was a challenge to establish a strong main power that presided over an entire country yet simultaneously prevent an abuse of power from a dictator, otherwise characteristics of a cruel, unjust, and oppressive rule would occur.

The outrageous American Revolution War left a lot of scars and bruises that had major affects on the country. On August 29, 1786 in Massachusetts, a rebellion broke out as one of the results that came after the war. This rebellion was led by a veteran from the American Revolutionary War, Daniel Shays, which was why this significant rebellion is called Shays’s Rebellion. The economic crisis that followed the war was a powerful start of Shays’s rebellion. The country itself was in a massive amount of debt and so did the people. Farmers did not have enough money to pay for their taxes, since the states

Without a strong central authority, the country was convulsed and confused by violent internal rebellion, economic stagnation, the petty rule of "bad men" (i.e. local-minded and self-interested), and national weakness in the face of predatory commercial rivals. Into this despairing void, stepped a shining band of broad-minded, far-seeing, disinterested, nationalist leaders who realized the impotent and inept government of the Confederation had not the powers to deal with the crisis or guide the country into the regulated, centrally managed future. Consequently, they led a constitutional revolution which discarded the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with a broad charter of national power, falsely described as federal, that by taxing, regulating, and promoting (i.e. subsidies!) rescued the economy and laid the solid foundation for America's future growth and prosperity. Students graduate thinking that were it not for the federal Constitution, we would all be sitting on the front porch of our cabin spitting tobacco, drinking home-made whiskey, and kicking our dog Blue.