Download or read book In Debt to Shays written by Robert A. Gross and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Debt to Shays takes a fresh perspective on the rebellion by challenging existing understandings of late eighteenth-century America and restoring the rebellion to its historical context

Download or read book Shays s Rebellion written by Leonard L. Richards and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-11-29 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the bitter winter of 1786-87, Daniel Shays, a modest farmer and Revolutionary War veteran, and his compatriot Luke Day led an unsuccessful armed rebellion against the state of Massachusetts. Their desperate struggle was fueled by the injustice of a regressive tax system and a conservative state government that seemed no better than British colonial rule. But despite the immediate failure of this local call-to-arms in the Massachusetts countryside, the event fundamentally altered the course of American history. Shays and his army of four thousand rebels so shocked the young nation's governing elite—even drawing the retired General George Washington back into the service of his country—that ultimately the Articles of Confederation were discarded in favor of a new constitution, the very document that has guided the nation for more than two hundred years, and brought closure to the American Revolution. The importance of Shays's Rebellion has never been fully appreciated, chiefly because Shays and his followers have always been viewed as a small group of poor farmers and debtors protesting local civil authority. In Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle, Leonard Richards reveals that this perception is misleading, that the rebellion was much more widespread than previously thought, and that the participants and their supporters actually represented whole communities—the wealthy and the poor, the influential and the weak, even members of some of the best Massachusetts families. Through careful examination of contemporary records, including a long-neglected but invaluable list of the participants, Richards provides a clear picture of the insurgency, capturing the spirit of the rebellion, the reasons for the revolt, and its long-term impact on the participants, the state of Massachusetts, and the nation as a whole. Shays's Rebellion, though seemingly a local affair, was the revolution that gave rise to modern American democracy.

Download or read book Shays s Rebellion written by Sean Condon and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How an uprising of debtors and small farmers unwittingly influenced the U.S. Constitution. 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,” these crowds attempted to pressure the state government to lower taxes and provide relief to debtors by using some of the same methods employed against British authority a decade earlier. From the perspective of men of wealth and station, these farmers threatened the foundations of society: property rights and their protection in courts and legislature. In this concise and compelling account of the uprising that came to be known as Shays’s Rebellion, Sean Condon describes the economic difficulties facing both private citizens and public officials in newly independent Massachusetts. He explains the state government policy that precipitated the farmers’ revolt, details the machinery of tax and debt collection in the 1780s, and provides readers with a vivid example of how the establishment of a republican form of government shifted the boundaries of dissent and organized protest. Underscoring both the fragility and the resilience of government authority in the nascent republic, the uprising and its aftermath had repercussions far beyond western Massachusetts; ultimately, it shaped the framing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which in turn ushered in a new, stronger, and property-friendly federal government. A masterful telling of a complicated story, Shays’s Rebellion is aimed at scholars and students of American history.

Download or read book Shays Rebellion written by Blake Hoena and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2022 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Shays Rebellion written by David P. Szatmary and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shays' Rebellion is often dismissed in the history books as an isolated incident following the American Revolution. Sometimes, it's grudingly given credit for spurring the Constitution Convention. In this well-balanced book, David P. Szatmary devotes the time and study necessary to classify Shays' Rebellion as the historical watershed it truly is. Shays' Rebellion signified more than economically depressed New England farmers waging war on creditors; it marked the beginning of the end of the American subsistence farmer. This change in an accepted way of life was at least as painful as the birth of the new United States. Szatmary chronicles how international influences forced a change in how merchants, farmers and artisans interacted, and how the initial changes brought friction. The rebellion resulting from this friction in turn revealed how ineffective the Articles of Confederation were in dealing with a crisis that could destroy the country. Szatmary links the state's governments weakness to the Constitution by using newspaper and editorial accounts of the day to provide a well-rounded view of an overlooked milestone.

Download or read book We Have Not a Government written by George William Van Cleve and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-04-05 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1783, as the Revolutionary War came to a close, Alexander Hamilton resigned in disgust from the Continental Congress after it refused to consider a fundamental reform of the Articles of Confederation. Just four years later, that same government collapsed, and Congress grudgingly agreed to support the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, which altered the Articles beyond recognition. What occurred during this remarkably brief interval to cause the Confederation to lose public confidence and inspire Americans to replace it with a dramatically more flexible and powerful government? We Have Not a Government is the story of this contentious moment in American history. In George William Van Cleve’s book, we encounter a sharply divided America. The Confederation faced massive war debts with virtually no authority to compel its members to pay them. It experienced punishing trade restrictions and strong resistance to American territorial expansion from powerful European governments. Bitter sectional divisions that deadlocked the Continental Congress arose from exploding western settlement. And a deep, long-lasting recession led to sharp controversies and social unrest across the country amid roiling debates over greatly increased taxes, debt relief, and paper money. Van Cleve shows how these remarkable stresses transformed the Confederation into a stalemate government and eventually led previously conflicting states, sections, and interest groups to advocate for a union powerful enough to govern a continental empire. Touching on the stories of a wide-ranging cast of characters—including John Adams, Patrick Henry, Daniel Shays, George Washington, and Thayendanegea—Van Cleve makes clear that it was the Confederation’s failures that created a political crisis and led to the 1787 Constitution. Clearly argued and superbly written, We Have Not a Government is a must-read history of this crucial period in our nation’s early life.

Download or read book Daniel Shays s Honorable Rebellion written by Daniel Bullen and published by . This book was released on 2024-04-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 25, 1787, in Springfield, Massachusetts, militia Major General William Shepard ordered his cannon to fire grapeshot at a peaceful demonstration of 1,200 farmers approaching the federal arsenal. The shots killed four and wounded twenty, marking the climax of five months of civil disobedience in Massachusetts, where farmers challenged the state's authority to seize their farms for flagrantly unjust taxes. Government leaders and influential merchants painted these protests as a violent attempt to overthrow the state, in hopes of garnering support for strengthening the federal government in a Constitutional Convention. As a result, the protests have been hidden for more than two hundred years under the misleading title, "Shays's Rebellion, the armed uprising that led to the Constitution." But this widely accepted narrative is just a legend: the "rebellion" was almost entirely nonviolent, and retired Revolutionary War hero Daniel Shays was only one of many leaders. Daniel Shays's Honorable Rebellion: An American Story by Daniel Bullen tells the history of the crisis from the protesters' perspective. Through five months of nonviolent protests, the farmers kept courts throughout Massachusetts from hearing foreclosures, facing down threats from the government, which escalated to the point that Governor James Bowdoin ultimately sent an army to arrest them. Even so, the people won reforms in an electoral landslide. Thomas Jefferson called these protests an honorable rebellion, and hoped that Americans would never let twenty years pass without such a campaign, to rein in powerful interests. This riveting and meticulously researched narrative shows that Shays and his fellow protesters were hardly a dangerous rabble, but rather a proud people who banded together peaceably, risking their lives for justice in a quintessentially American story.

Download or read book A Brilliant Solution written by Carol Berkin and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting all the original documents and using her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century history and politics, Carol Berkin takes a fresh look at the men who framed the Constitution, the issues they faced, and the times they lived in. Berkin transports the reader into the hearts and minds of the founders, exposing their fears and their limited expectations of success.

Download or read book The Contrast written by Cynthia A. Kierner and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Contrast“, which premiered at New York City's John Street Theater in 1787, was the first American play performed in public by a professional theater company. The play, written by New England-born, Harvard-educated, Royall Tyler was timely, funny, and extremely popular. When the play appeared in print in 1790, George Washington himself appeared at the head of its list of hundreds of subscribers. Reprinted here with annotated footnotes by historian Cynthia A. Kierner, Tyler’s play explores the debate over manners, morals, and cultural authority in the decades following American Revolution. Did the American colonists' rejection of monarchy in 1776 mean they should abolish all European social traditions and hierarchies? What sorts of etiquette, amusements, and fashions were appropriate and beneficial? Most important, to be a nation, did Americans need to distinguish themselves from Europeans—and, if so, how? Tyler was not the only American pondering these questions, and Kierner situates the play in its broader historical and cultural contexts. An extensive introduction provides readers with a background on life and politics in the United States in 1787, when Americans were in the midst of nation-building. The book also features a section with selections from contemporary letters, essays, novels, conduct books, and public documents, which debate issues of the era.

Download or read book The Winter Hero written by James Lincoln Collier and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Justin Conkey was too young to fight in the Revolution of 1776, but now it is 1787 and he is fourteen. Justin is ready to fight, even if he has only his father's old sword to protect him. But once on the battlefield, war is not what he expected. It is dangerous and frightening and nothing makes sense. Throughout a particularly bitter winter the young man is desperate to prove that he too can be a hero—not realizing that many times heroes turn out to be just ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, who do what comes naturally to save others regardless of risk to themselves. Insisting on joining General Daniel Shays' group of Regulators, he lies about his age and marches with the group throughout New England. But war puts friendships and political convictions to the test.

Download or read book Ratification written by Pauline Maier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic story of the debate over the ratification of the Constitution, the first new account of this seminal moment in American history in years.

Download or read book How Shays Rebellion Changed America written by Lonny Hawe and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-04-23 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shays's Rebellion was a revolt led by Daniel Shays in Massachusetts over the issue of the foreclosure of farms due to economic issues in the state and nationwide. The Rebellion was important because it contributed to the writing of the new Constitution, by causing elites to fear similar uprisings in the future. Shays and his compatriots sought debt relief through lower taxes and receiving funds from the government. They attempted to stop the courts from taking their property by forcing the courts in western Massachusetts to close at gunpoint. Shays' Rebellion caused many citizens to realize that the American Revolution's attempt at democracy had gone too far. Shays' mission was to stop the government from penalizing individuals who were unable to pay their debts. When Massachusetts enacted laws that Shays and others didn't like, the rebels had no qualms about taking up arms, and while the rebellion was eventually put down, changes were made to prevent similar problems in the future. Out of this came peace, order, and freedom.

Download or read book Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution written by Woody Holton and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution's origins by telling the history of the average Americans who challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The framers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse America's post–Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They believed too many middling Americans exercised too much influence over state and national policies. That the framers were only partially successful in curtailing citizen rights is due to the reaction, sometimes violent, of unruly average Americans. If not to protect civil liberties and the freedom of the people, what motivated the framers? In Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Holton provides the startling discovery that the primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to make America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to that endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately away from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the Constitution, Holton captures how the same class of Americans that produced Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in damn near every other state) produced the Constitution we now revere. Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution is a 2007 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

Download or read book Inventing a Nation written by Gore Vidal and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This New York Times bestseller offers “an unblinking view of our national heroes by one who cherishes them, warts and all” (New York Review of Books). In Inventing a Nation, National Book Award winner Gore Vidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and bedrooms), the convention halls, and the salons of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others. We come to know these men, through Vidal’s splendid prose, in ways we have not up to now—their opinions of each other, their worries about money, their concerns about creating a viable democracy. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation. He also illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they delivered, and the institutions of government by which we still live. More than two centuries later, America is still largely governed by the ideas championed by this triumvirate. The author of Burr and Lincoln, one of the master stylists of American literature and most acute observers of American life, turns his immense literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of these formidable men

Download or read book The Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.

Download or read book The Framers Coup written by Michael J. Klarman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans revere their Constitution. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. As Benjamin Franklin keenly observed, any assembly of men bring with them "all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views." One need not deny that the Framers had good intentions in order to believe that they also had interests. Based on prodigious research and told largely through the voices of the participants, Michael Klarman's The Framers' Coup narrates how the Framers' clashing interests shaped the Constitution--and American history itself. The Philadelphia convention could easily have been a failure, and the risk of collapse was always present. Had the convention dissolved, any number of adverse outcomes could have resulted, including civil war or a reversion to monarchy. Not only does Klarman capture the knife's-edge atmosphere of the convention, he populates his narrative with riveting and colorful stories: the rebellion of debtor farmers in Massachusetts; George Washington's uncertainty about whether to attend; Gunning Bedford's threat to turn to a European prince if the small states were denied equal representation in the Senate; slave staters' threats to take their marbles and go home if denied representation for their slaves; Hamilton's quasi-monarchist speech to the convention; and Patrick Henry's herculean efforts to defeat the Constitution in Virginia through demagoguery and conspiracy theories. The Framers' Coup is more than a compendium of great stories, however, and the powerful arguments that feature throughout will reshape our understanding of the nation's founding. Simply put, the Constitutional Convention almost didn't happen, and once it happened, it almost failed. And, even after the convention succeeded, the Constitution it produced almost failed to be ratified. Just as importantly, the Constitution was hardly the product of philosophical reflections by brilliant, disinterested statesmen, but rather ordinary interest group politics. Multiple conflicting interests had a say, from creditors and debtors to city dwellers and backwoodsmen. The upper class overwhelmingly supported the Constitution; many working class colonists were more dubious. Slave states and nonslave states had different perspectives on how well the Constitution served their interests. Ultimately, both the Constitution's content and its ratification process raise troubling questions about democratic legitimacy. The Federalists were eager to avoid full-fledged democratic deliberation over the Constitution, and the document that was ratified was stacked in favor of their preferences. And in terms of substance, the Constitution was a significant departure from the more democratic state constitutions of the 1770s. Definitive and authoritative, The Framers' Coup explains why the Framers preferred such a constitution and how they managed to persuade the country to adopt it. We have lived with the consequences, both positive and negative, ever since.

Download or read book Active Liberty written by Stephen Breyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant new approach to the Constitution and courts of the United States by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.For Justice Breyer, the Constitution’s primary role is to preserve and encourage what he calls “active liberty”: citizen participation in shaping government and its laws. As this book argues, promoting active liberty requires judicial modesty and deference to Congress; it also means recognizing the changing needs and demands of the populace. Indeed, the Constitution’s lasting brilliance is that its principles may be adapted to cope with unanticipated situations, and Breyer makes a powerful case against treating it as a static guide intended for a world that is dead and gone. Using contemporary examples from federalism to privacy to affirmative action, this is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate over the role and power of our courts.