Shay's Rebellion Dbq

For our founding fathers creating a new government was a very lengthy and difficult task in which all thirteen colonies had to come together and make compromises. One of the critical moments in which the founding fathers were urgently forced to have a meeting was because of what we historically know as Shay’s Rebellion, an unruly mob led by a revolutionary soldier Daniel Shay (Ginsberg et al. 37). According to the text book We the People, Shay’s Rebellion showed the flaws in the Articles of Confederation, a weak government unable to act promptly in critical emergencies (Ginsberg et al. 38). The founding fathers had to go from the Articles of Confederation to creating a completely new government, the U.S Constitution. As you can image this

Congress under the Articles of Confederation was the central government without an executive branch unable to tax or monitor the economy and lacked union among states with only one vote per state. (Ginsberg et al. 35). Therefore, it was practically impossible for all states to agree on any changes to flourish as a nation. This divided government urged our leaders to create a strong government, but before they were able to do so they were proposed by two national government plans that created disagreement among states: the Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan (Ginsberg et al. 39). The Virginia Plan “…provided for a system of representation in the national legislature based upon the population of each state or the proportion of each state’s revenue contribution to the national government or both” (Ginsberg et al. 39). The Virginia Plan favored larger state and many smaller states became oppose to this plan. However, the smaller states quickly answered back proposing the New Jersey Plan asking for “…equal state representation in the national legislature regardless of population (Ginsberg et al. 39).” This disagreement on representation further divided the states and

According to textbook We the People, checks and balances is a rule to limit abuse of power, each division of government is able to take part in and impact other alternative divisions (Ginsberg et al. 42). This rule of checks and balances makes it possible for our branches to check one another and to limit the abuse of power. In the book We the People, explains “each branch is given not only its own powers but also some power to the other branches. (Ginsberg et al. 47).” In the end you will understand how this concept of checks and balance applies throughout the structure of the U.S