Shays Rebellion

As simply stated, a rebellion is an effort by many people to change a government or leader of a country by the use of protest or violence. In 1786, one man had returned home from serving his country in the American Revolutionary War to find that the same government he was fighting for had turned against him. With heavy taxes, loss of livestock, and possibly his social status at risk he sold his most prized possessions in hopes of one day regaining control of his livelihood. This man was Daniel Shays; in the late summer of 1786 he banned together a group of likeminded farmers who were about to lose everything they had worked so hard to achieve to an unruly elite. Shays’ Rebellion was an armed uprising that was triggered by financial difficulties brought out of post war economic depression, a credit crunch caused by a lack of hard currency, and financially harsh government policies.

Daniel Shays was a poor farmhand from Massachusetts when the revolution broke out who fought for the new America- a country who would promise him freedom and a life with endless possibilities. The states were drafting constitutions that would guarantee religious freedoms, increase the states size and power allowing them to tax more progressively, and reform inheritance laws. He joined the Continental Army and saw action in the battles of Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and Saratoga. As the Revolutionary War raged on between Great Britain and the colonies for eight years between 1775 and 1783, his farm was being taxed without his knowledge. Shays managed to not only live through the battles he was in but also the disease, such as small pox, that claimed more lives than the war itself. When he finally got wounded in action he returned home, unpaid, o...

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...ardoned in 1788 and he returned back to Massachusetts after hiding out in the Vermont woods. He later moved to New York where he lived until he died poor and lonely in 1825.

The rebellion took place in the perfect political era where reform of the country’s governing document, the Articles of Confederation, was seen as necessary. The federal government was notably weak under the Articles of Confederation. Under this confederation states often argued amongst themselves, they refused to support the national government which made it powerless to enforce any acts it did pass. Shay’s rebellion played a small role in what shaped our American history. These rebels drew out some anti-federalists to the strong government side. As early as 1785 many influential merchants and political officials were in agreement that a strong central government was what the states needed.