Aug 24, 2019 3 min read

In 1786, having won the American Revolution, America was an independent nation, but one with a huge debt because of the millions of dollars it borrowed to finance that war. Also, with the war over, European ships loaded with goods were flooding American ports, but war-impoverished Americans couldn’t afford those goods. The result was a deflationary spiral – merchants cutting the cost of their products to sell them – that affected America’s farmers, who also had to cut the costs of their crops to the point they often sold them at a loss. It was that or let them rot in the fields.

To pay back the national debt, the states raised taxes, which left farmers in the double bind of having less income and higher taxes – meaning the possibility of their farms being foreclosed. One of those farmers was Daniel Shays of Massachusetts, who like thousands of other farmers in Massachusetts had fought in the American Revolution and was still owed back pay from that revolution.

In effect, Daniel Shays and his fellow war veterans were being asked to pay taxes to be used to pay off their states’, and nation’s, war debts, one of which was back pay they owed these veterans! This wasn’t “Rob Peter to pay Paul,” this was “Rob Peter to pay Peter,” so after repeated petitions to the Massachusetts state legislature were ignored, this week (Aug. 29) in 1786, what was called Shays’ Rebellion was launched, as Shays and his compatriots organized into a force dedicated to shutting down the state courts that were processing their foreclosures while also fending off the state’s tax collectors.

Compounding the problem was that the government was so broke it could not raise an army to end this rebellion, necessitating that a militia force be raised that was paid for by wealthy Bostonians. That militia finally defeated Shays’ army when it tried to seize a federal arsenal of weapons in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Militarily, Shays’ Rebellion was not a major threat, but symbolically it had a definite impact on both the citizenry and those national leaders preparing for the Constitutional Convention coming in May, whose purpose was to create a government with more power than the hopelessly ineffective Articles of Confederation that currently governed the country.

Just how much stronger to make this new government was the major debating point – there were many who, with good reason, feared a powerful national government – but thanks to Shays’ Rebellion, the momentum shifted to those who argued that the new national government must have more power, including, at the very least, the power to pay its debts as well as pay for an army to prevent, or put down, rebellions such as Shays’.

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s email address is bruce@historylessons.net.