Day 4: August 29, 1786

What Happened:
Daniel Shays was like many Revolutionary War veterans, struggling to make a living in the Western part of his state, Massachusetts. Times were tough after the euphoria of defeating the world's greatest superpower wore off. Now we need to govern this sonofabitch. A depression hit hard, credit was tight and states were instituting what common people saw as draconian taxes and debt collection policies. The image of greedy businessmen from the East Coast foreclosing on struggling farmers in the West, many of whom were veterans like Shays, was hard to swallow for many Americans. Shays and several other men started to speak out and instigate unrest in the Massachusetts interior in the great incubators of revolt, the local pubs. They eventually semi-organized a rebel ragtag army and began their revolt on August 29, 1786. One of their first actions was to shut down several courthouses (by threatening to hang the judges if they held court proceedings) to prevent further debt collection and foreclosures. The new federal government was powerless under the terms of the Articles of Confederation to respond. It was up to the governor of Massachusetts and several wealthy businessmen to organize their own private army to stand up to the perceived anarchy threatened by what was to be called Shay's Rebellion. The state militia defeated the rebels when the rebels tried to take the federal armory at Springfield. They never really recovered from the defeat, scattered, and most either returned to their farms or were arrested. Shay's Rebellion was over.

ABOVE: Daniel Shays. He was eventually captured, sentenced to death, pardoned, and retired in poverty in Conesus, New York, where he died in obscurity years later.

Why It Is Important:
As usual, some background is necessary. After our stunning victory in the Revolutionary War, there was the equally daunting task of creating a new country. The states took the first crack at writing constitutions for themselves, but eventually the Articles of Confederation were ratified in 1781 and agreed upon as the new structure for our loose, very loose, union. Remember, the Revolution had been fought upon principles of natural and individual rights with a strong suspicion of any sort of central authority. The Articles reflected that, they were a loose confederation of states. Each of the thirteen states was essentially their own sovereign nation, with their own money, army and tariffs. It was chaos. There was one branch of government, Congress. And Congress basically only had power to make treaties and run a post office. There was no power to regulate commerce between states (so each state raised tariffs against the others, making fluid trade impossible) and no power to tax or raise revenue. The best they could do was ask the states for "voluntary contributions." You can guess how successful that was. Congress had no power over the states in anything, and they could not act against any citizen of individual states. It wasn't all bad, the Articles did settle the sticky question of how to handle the Western lands with the Northwest Ordinance, which probably avoided an early East vs. West civil war.

But by the mid-1780's, things had really deteriorated. There was a depression, states refused to fund the federal government, U.S. credit abroad was a joke because there was no unified economy. Each state continued to issue their own worthless money, making the economy worse. There were sometimes violent border disputes between states. Britain refused to even send an ambassador, with one British official joking that they would not know where to send him, they would have to send 13 of them. It was becoming apparent that the Articles were not sufficient as written, and a movement arose amongst many of the elites to tweek and amend the Articles. (Problem: the Articles could not be amended unless there was unanimous consent amongst the states, and these thirteen states never all agreed on anything).

It was in this environment that Shay's Rebellion erupted. Many historians believe, as do I, that Shay's Rebellion was the final push that was needed to do more than merely tweek the Articles. Shay's Rebellion shook the elites of this country to the core, there was a real fear of anarchy and mob rule. We had too much of a good thing, too much freedom, too much republicanism. It was less democracy and more mobocracy. Alexander Hamilton had already proposed a meeting in Philadelphia to revisit the Articles, but the experience of Shay's Rebellion and the spector of more unrest, and the image of an impotent federal government powerless to deal with it, pushed many of these important men going to Philadelphia to go further than merely making a few changes to the Articles. In reacting to the oppressive British government, we had gone too far in the other direction in making an exceedingly weak federal government for ourselves. Shay's Rebellion, in large part, showed us that we needed more of a balance between state and federal power. These remarkable men met in secret and agreed immediately to scrap the Articles altogether and start over. This was beyond their mandate from the states, but no matter, the Constitutional Convention was underway.

ABOVE: As if to prove that the new Constitution made up for the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 had a very different resolution than Shay's. The state militia of Pennsylvania was not needed. New president George Washington, taking his Constitutional role of commander in chief literally, personally led U.S. forces into Western Pennsylvania to put down the tax revolt. Once the rebels saw George himself riding up on his white horse Nelson, leading his troops, they gave up without firing a shot.