Shays Rebellion Research Paper

Shays' Rebellion was the first uprising of the new nation. The battles were fought in Massachusetts. During the time period of 1786-1787, The United States government decided to raise taxes, in order to raise capital and

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

Shays Rebellion Illustrates the weaknesses of the Articles of confederation under which we now live. The Articles of Confederation can not regulate trade, levy taxes, or unify these 13 colonies. These problems cause

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

The supporters of Shays’ Rebellion were doing what was right and letting the government know that they didn’t like the immensely high taxes that were in place. They fought for their rights, were illegitimately jailed, and the law enforcement misused their authority. Even if the odds were against them, the farmers still took action and protested. These signs of bravery and courage show that the protesters were not rebels, but freedom

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.

Throughout history, rebellions have occurred in attempts to solve issues of discontent caused by wants or needs that were not met. Bacon’s Rebellion, the Stono Rebellion, the uprising of the Paxton Boys, and the Regulator Movement all represent situations of this kind. For Nathaniel Bacon and the Paxton Boys it was conflict of security; they were not receiving adequate protection from the natives. For the slaves and the western Carolinians, it was an issue of freedom and injustice.They resented the unfair treatment they experienced and wanted this inequality to change. These events represented just four in a long history of American conflicts and oppression where, as Bacon, the slaves, the Paxton Boys, and the Carolinians demonstrate, one

They had just become an independent nation and they were trying to figure out how the government was going to work. In 1786 Shay’s Rebellion started, which was a result from too high of taxes that were put into action to help pay off war debt. During this rebellion it looked like the U.S. was going off the deep end, everything they had just fought for was not working. Then in the fall

In 1786, debt-ridden farmers in Massachusetts organized an insurrection, now known as Shays’ Rebellion, against the state government. These farmers were struck by the economic depression that followed the American Revolution and they petitioned the state senate to issue paper money and to halt foreclosure of mortgages on their property. When the state senate failed to pass reforms, armed insurgents under the leadership of Daniel Shays and others, began forcibly to prevent the county courts from sitting to make judgments for debt. The ineffectiveness of the state government in ending the Rebellion was obvious and many Americans realized that the Articles of Confederation had to be revised. The Articles gave Congress virtually

While rebellion is not always a healthy thing, as a result of Shay’s Rebellion we have learned many things about financial hardship after the Revolutionary War, how this affected masses of people, and how rebellion has shaped America today. Daniel Shays was one of the main leaders of the rebellion known as Shay’s Rebellion that occurred from 1786 to 1787, what Jonathan Smith says to be “one the most dramatic and significant incidents in the critical post-Revolutionary War period.” (Smith 77) With the Revolutionary War coming to an end in September of 1783, America, and its citizens, were struggling not only financially, but also politically. Financial struggles stemmed from the massive debt that the U.S. acquired

Daniel Shays was a former officer in the Continental Army (Schultz, 2009). After the war, the economy took a turn for the worse, especially the farmers. The farmers’ income had fallen dramatically due and they were at risk of losing their farms, as well as going to jail for failure to pay their debts. In Massachusetts, a tax increase caused additional worries for the farmers. Some small towns in Massachusetts pleaded with the assembly regarding the taxes and lawsuits. However, their request were declined resulting in protests from the people which resulted in Shays Rebellion. He led a group of 1200 male protestors to the federal arsenal anticipating seizing control and cause the government to address the debt issues.

The exact date of when Daniel Shays was born is ¬unknown, though it is recorded that he was born in 1747 in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. He was the second child born to Patrick Shays and Margaret Dempsey Shays, both of which were of Irish decent and immigrated to Massachusetts in the 1730s.1 Shays and his siblings were raised in humble circumstances, growing up in a poor household and being neglected of an education.2 As a young man, he sold his labor and began working on farms, and at a young age, he “had much taste for the military,” often drilling militia men when they assembled for training.3 He served as a minuteman at Lexington, a sergeant in Captain Reuben Dickinson’s company in 1775, fought and Ticonderoga, was promoted to lieutenant in 1776, appointed captain in the Fifth Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army, where he fought at Saratoga, and at Stony Point.4 Near the end of the war, Shays and his wife Abigail moved to Pelham, Massachusetts, where he owned 251 acres of land but struggled meeting financial obligations and was compelled to sell his land.5 The end of the Revolution had caused a recession and put the government in debt, but it was the citizens who would pay the price.

Shays Rebellion- was a protest to foreclose farms for debt which succeeded in the court system. An example of the American experiment of government is like taxpayers not getting a break because of construction projects by the local government. An example of shays rebellion is though brought by economic disasters. These two terms go hand and hand because Shays rebellion was a big eye opener regarding the relationship between the citizens and their government it was up to the founding

This bridge is where the irregular forces, for this essay the militia, build space for a conventional force to be fielded and provide momentum for the movement. One of the first scenes of the traditional guerrilla attack came after the opening shots in Lexington and subsequent march to Concord. Once word spread, the militia was called out and took to the hills and trees and harassed the British all the way back to Lexington resulting in 273 British casualties. When the British fired on the militia in Lexington, they showed that they were not legitimate and galvanized the support of the local populace resulting in a “moral victory for the insurgents.” Militia service was viewed as a requirement for all patriots and served as an extra-legal military arm of the larger political struggle for legitimacy. If an individual failed to turn out for muster he would suffer the consequences of a mob or militia visit that served to “sway” them to the revolutionary view. In John Shy’s words “the mechanism of their political conversion was the militia.” While the militia was continuing small attacks and harassing the British Army and posts, George Washington and the Continental Army were fighting a more conventional battle and standing up a regular

David Szatmary proposed in his book “Shays’ Rebellion The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection” that Shays’ Rebellion can be more fully understood as an economic conflict that originated from a clash between a commercial society and a traditional way of life. The conflict between the New England yeomen farmers who refused to embrace the new commercial society due to the fact that they were more pleased with the traditional way of life. Szatmary states that yeomen farmers where accustom to trading with shopkeepers for the goods that they needed by paying them back with other goods and labor, this traditional way of life that the yeomen farmers practiced created many conflicts for the merchants. He is able to stress the underlying cause of tension between farmers and merchants in New England which was created by a high debt that needed to be payed and because