The Shays Rebellion and the Origins of Sound Governance in the US - Essay Example

The Shay’s Rebellion and the Origins of Sound Governance in the US Only three years after the end of American Revolution, the highly expected celebratory moments of triumph over the many years of British control was seemingly becoming elusive under the very watch of the founding fathers. Run by the Congress [the sole organ of the national government], which basically had virtually no control over individual confederation states, the central government’s weakness was but an open embarrassment that threatened the stability of a young nation that fought itself out of imperialism with a determination to defend itself against any form foreign interference . From a limited military strength to a baseless financial system all courtesy of a loose union where states drifted apart at will on necessary policy issues, mass discontent, more so from the revolution war veterans, became an imminent danger to the newly established governance structures; a danger that laid bare the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, and consequently informing a new roadmap towards a new America that could stand the tests of time.1 The power to levy taxes was, in particular, critical to the smooth functioning of the national government. The huge outstanding debts were almost commonplace after the revolution; seven of the thirteen states underwent severe cash flow problems, occasionally printing large sums of their own paper money, backed by nothing.2 Massachusetts, like other states, found itself swimming in the deep depression that followed the revolution. Pressed hard by the ongoing crisis yet with limited options, the government responded by squeezing credit; a non-popular option that triggered widespread lack of hard currency.3 With the cash flow literally gagged, the continental war veterans who had earlier received land as part of their compensation in order to quell their growing discontent with the national government found their only source of livelihoods threatened. Their usual receipt of continental notes, which would have provided them with a reprieve, had lost substantial value that even the government of the day no longer accepted them in form of taxes.4 The compensation woes notwithstanding, the immediate sealing off of the British agricultural markets right after the war made the situation even more worse; large stock inventories piled up, prompting a merchants’ dilemma of the repayment of the hitherto advanced agricultural debts. Unable to settle the outstanding debt with the English creditors, merchants turned on small debtors [farmers] seizing properties [including land] to service loans. The state’s [Massachusetts] and the Confederation’s immediate economic remedy of raising taxes to fund the war debts stretched the already worse state of affairs even further. With the economy largely reduced into the traditionally barter system, farmers and rural artisans essentially owed creditors and the tax man cash that was literally nonexistent. Their [farmers] attempts to petition the Massachusetts legislature to revise the state’s constitution to enable fair taxation, equal representation, issue paper money and/or pass tender laws that would permit debtors to service their loans in goods and services alongside the hard currency bore no fruits.5 A legislature dominated by commercial interests, the proposed reforms never featured beyond the petition. Rather than being sympathetic enough to the protesters’ genuine public concern, assemblymen responded with contempt charging that: “They, the people, are luxurious in their diet, idle and profligate in their manners, encouragers of foreign manufacturers.”6 As the economy increasingly worsened, they [debtors/farmers] found themselves hauled up in losing court battles with quite a number of defaulters ending up in state prisons; an ultimate fate that was probably imminent for Daniel Shays, having been sued twice. Angered by the legislature’s blatant refusal to adopt any of the recommendations in the petition, Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran himself, led an economic revolt of debtors [that largely comprised of farmers] on August, 29, 1786, that begun with shutting down of civil courts in Springfield, Massachusetts, as an immediate solution to the harsh penalties that involved property seizures by the creditors. In-the-pipeline was an attempt to overthrow the state’s government altogether through an all-out rebellion to completely prevent any more trial of debtors that did nothing but leave them poor.7 Though poorly executed, the envisaged highest point of the insurrection came with the Springfield armory attack, ending in a humiliating defeat of Shays’ men by a strong army organized by the state. By winter the following year the revolt was no more. Nonetheless, the underlying issues that propelled Shays’ dramatic action remained, with similar civil unrests, though in small, occurring in Maine, New York, Connecticut among other places.8 In fact, James Bowdoin, the governor in charge at the time of the rebellion, paid the ultimate price of mass discontent in the election that followed; a situation that was bound, and indeed replicated elsewhere with the election of pro-debtor governments. By and large, The Shays’ Rebellion was more than a Massachusetts problem pitting disgruntled landowners and the merchant class, who, apparently, had unseen hand in the functioning of the state legislature. To the extent that fellow Americans took up arms to object more or less similar injustices fought and conquered just a few years before, not to mention the total lack of Federal aid in quashing the rebellion, the Articles of Confederation was but an agreement whose durability was more questionable in many ways. To be sure, the United States constitution owes much of its resilience to the very rebellion lurking beneath the Articles of Confederation’s inadequacies.9 The unity and strength that ushered in the revolution victory never found its way in this particular document; for no government can function without the authority to tax. Inexperience coupled with compering leadership interests and jealousies could be seen right through the document with open risks.10 The very leaders who fought for independence united needed a harder striking force to bring back the lost sanity; which Shays, gladly enough, single handedly managed to arouse across the nation; for it is through his efforts that national leaders felt compelled to act by putting in place a constitution that has now become a model the world over. References Brant, Irving. “Establishing a Government.” The American Story: The Age of the Atom. Edited by Miers, Earl Schenck. New York: H. Wolff, 1956. Hull, Mary . Shays' Rebellion and the Constitution in American History. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Publishers, 2000. Gross, Robert, ed. In Debt to Shays: A Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993. Szatmary, David. Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980. Read More