ipl-logo

Essay On Shay's Rebellion

507 Words3 Pages

Shay’s rebellion was a crisis happened in 1780s at rural areas of central and western Massachusetts. At that time, many farmers were bonded to high debt when they started new farm, because of the local government did not handle the economic crisis well, there was no pro-debtor laws (i.e. forgiving debt and print more paper money). They already sent letters to the elected leaders, however, they only getting ignored by the state government, also the national government could not do anything because they had no power under the Articles of Confederation, which had many weaknesses, such as; (1) The national government did not have power to tax, (2) Congress did not have power to forces the states to obey the laws, (3) There was no system of national courts, (4) Congress could declare war and raise army, however it could not force the state …show more content…

Because of those, Articles of Confederation was too weak to handle all the issues, which U.S. was unable to defend its own country against rebellion. Moreover, the local sheriff seized many farmers who could not pay their debts. This condition caused to the first armed civil disobedience in post-Revolutionary of U.S. Obviously, Americans was disagreed with high taxes and unresponsive government. the farmers at western Massachusetts organized their rebellion similar to the American Revolutionary way. They held special meeting of the citizens to protest and agree on organized demonstration. It caused the rebels to close the court by force and freed the debtors from jail. The rebellion incident happened under Daniel Shays leadership, a former captain of ground force and Revolutionary War veteran. Shays forced George Washington and the other Americans to rethink about Confederation system and the

Open Document