After the American Revolutionary War, the US had to pay its debts to European countries, leading to high land taxes on farmers and causing great hardship. The resulting Shay Rebellion was unsuccessful, but it helped shape the writing of the US Constitution by highlighting the need for a stronger central government.
War causes debt in most cases, and after the American Revolutionary War, the new United States had to find a way to pay its debts to European countries. One decision that left many people in dire straits was to raise land taxes on farmers, and this created enormous hardship, especially among farmers and traders. There was inequity between the taxes the peasants had to pay and the taxes the merchants paid. Small farmers in the eastern states could not service their debts, leading to revolts such as the Shay Rebellion.
Many of the people in dire financial straits were men who had served in the military during the Revolutionary War. Faced with mounting debt, the possibility of losing everything they had, or even imprisonment for debt, they asked the Massachusetts legislature for debt relief. This was not granted, and great poverty resulted instead. Men such as Daniel Shays organized accordingly, and one action taken in 1786 was to march on the debtors’ courts and demand that they cease business.
In 1787, what is often called Shays’ Rebellion took place. Shays and his forces, sometimes called Shaysite and numbering about 1000-1500, attacked an armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. In fact, the term Shays’ Rebellion as applied to this last act is inaccurate. All of Shays’ actions between 1786 and 1787 are considered Shays’ Rebellion.
What happened in the attack on the Springfield armory was unsuccessful for both Shays and his men. A militia under General Benjamin Lincoln was able to defend the armory and dispersed most of Shays’ men. Two men were hanged and Shays was sentenced to death, but the rebellion had long-lasting effects. First, the federal government recognized that Shays had a legitimate complaint and within a year of the end of Shays’ rebellion they had pardoned most of the men involved, including Shays.
The other reason the Shays Rebellion is often cited as more than a footnote in American history is because it helped shape the writing of the United States Constitution. In 1786 and 1787, the government still used the Articles of Confederation as its primary laws. Yet the Articles of Confederation were partly responsible for the drastic poverty and mismanagement of that poverty of people like Daniel Shays. One of the more specific things in these articles was the limit of power in the central government. A greater power could have tackled some of the problems Shays and his men fought over.
Help did not come soon enough for Daniel Shays and many men of the Shay Rebellion. Although the Massachusetts legislature was able to change a few things the following year to help offer debt relief to farmers, people like Daniel Shays died without such assistance. Shays’ plight and that of many farmers made a strong impression on the Founding Fathers of the United States and ultimately helped create more equity in the United States Constitution.
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