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 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 Shays Rebellion and the Constitution in American History written by Mary Hull and published by Enslow Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents

Download or read book Shays Rebellion written by Michael Burgan and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2008-09 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the circumstances in Massachusetts that led farmers to rebel against local and state governments soon after the Revolutionary War.

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 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: A masterful telling of a complicated story, Shays's Rebellion is aimed at scholars and students of American history.

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 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 Settlement in Vermont A Story of Revolt and Archaeology written by Stephen D. Butz and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ruins of Daniel Shays's fortified settlement reveal the hidden story of the famous rebellion. Shays and the Regulators founded the settlement deep in the Vermont wilderness after fleeing the uprising they led in 1787 in Massachusetts. Rediscovered in 1997 and under study since 2013, these remnants divulge secrets of Shays's life that previously remained unknown, including his connection to Millard Filmore and the Anti-Federalist lawyer John Bay. As the leader of the site's first formal study, Stephen D. Butz weaves together the tale of the archaeological investigation, along with Shays's heroic life in the Continental army, his role in the infamous rebellion that bears his name and his influence on American law.

Download or read book A Few Notes on the Shays Rebellion written by John Noble and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 158 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 Fries s Rebellion written by Paul Douglas Newman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-05-31 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1798, the federal government levied its first direct tax on American citizens, one that seemed to favor land speculators over farmers. In eastern Pennsylvania, the tax assessors were largely Quakers and Moravians who had abstained from Revolutionary participation and were recruited by the administration of John Adams to levy taxes against their patriot German Reformed and Lutheran neighbors. Led by local Revolutionary hero John Fries, the farmers drew on the rituals of crowd action and stopped the assessment. Following the Shays and Whiskey rebellions, Fries's Rebellion was the last in a trilogy of popular uprisings against federal authority in the early republic. But in contrast to the previous armed insurrections, the Fries rebels used nonviolent methods while simultaneously exercising their rights to petition Congress for the repeal of the tax law as well as the Alien and Sedition Acts. In doing so, they sought to manifest the principle of popular sovereignty and to expand the role of local people within the emerging national political system rather than attacking it from without. After some resisters were liberated from the custody of a federal marshal, the Adams administration used military force to suppress the insurrection. The resisters were charged with sedition and treason. Fries himself was sentenced to death but was pardoned at the eleventh hour by President Adams. The pardon fractured the presidential cabinet and splintered the party, just before Thomas Jefferson's and the Republican Party's "Revolution of 1800." The first book-length treatment of this significant eighteenth-century uprising, Fries's Rebellion shows us that the participants of the rebellion reengaged Revolutionary ideals in an enduring struggle to further democratize their country.

Download or read book The Whiskey Rebellion written by Thomas P. Slaughter and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 1986 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the rebellion in relation to interregional tensions, international diplomacy, frontier expansion, republican ideology and the social and political conflict of the l780s -1790s.

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 A Few Notes on the Shays Rebellion written by John Noble and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore one of the most pivotal moments in early American history - the Shays Rebellion of 1786-1787. This account offers an in-depth look at the rebellion, from its causes and key players to its impact on the country as a whole. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book Shays Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-02-22 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts of the insurrections *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Even as the young United States successfully secured its independence, the new nation was beset by problems. The drafters of the Articles of Confederation had deliberately avoided giving the national legislature the power to tax, because Parliament had so abused that authority against the colonies, but this proved to be a severe limitation on the national government. Besides hampering the Continental Army, the inability of the national government to raise revenue made foreign policy difficult. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress was also completely unable to pay any of the debts it incurred to foreign powers during the Revolutionary War. Though allied powers had lent to the American government on favorable terms and no repayment was expected until the end of hostilities, the hope of ever paying national debts without a national government that could tax was slim. In particular, the prospect of the new nation defaulting on its loans from France led to the end of the Articles of Confederation. To top it all off, the Articles of Confederation also had no judiciary or executive branch. Therefore, laws passed by the Congress could not be enforced by the national government: the enforcement of laws was left to the mercy of the states. Likewise, there was no national judiciary to decide disputes over national law. The series of riots known collectively as Shays' Rebellion began during the earliest years of American independence and were led by men who were, by their very nature, rebels. Unlike most countries in the world, 18th century America was made up of people who believed in change, and who were willing to leave their homelands and strike out for the unknown to find it. The men who had just years earlier participated in the American Revolution were not afraid to break down a government they did not like; indeed, many of them reveled in it. 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 more freedom. As Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton was looking for ways to shore up the young nation's finances and pay off the debts incurred by the Revolution. At the same time, he believed in strengthening the federal government vis-�-vis the states, which would eventually make him a leader of the Federalist party but also compel him to push for a tax on distillers of alcohol, many of whom took their excess corn and grain crops and produced liquors. Ironically, Hamilton came up with the idea of this tax to avoid more direct forms of taxation, and because he didn't think it would be difficult to collect. What Hamilton didn't consider was just how ubiquitous the production of whiskey and other liquors were on the frontier, where they were often used as a form of currency itself. In addition to being upset at this new tax, Westerners believed it was disproportionately aimed at them because Americans still residing on the East Coast weren't as reliant on the production of whiskey. In 1794, violence actually broke out, and with the tax opponents numbering in the thousands, President Washington himself felt compelled to raise a militia force and personally lead it to deal with the rebels, the only time an American president actually led soldiers in the field. Ultimately, no pitched battle took place once the militia was marched into western Pennsylvania, but dozens were arrested and tried for treason in the wake of the episode.

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 881 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.