What Are The Consequences Of Shay's Rebellion

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In the first years of peacetime following the American Revolutionary War, the future of American society appeared threatened by a strangling “chain of debt” from Europe that aggravated the depressed economy of the postwar years. This poor economy affected almost everyone in New England especially the rural farmers and capitalist merchants, which tested the precarious institutions of the Articles of Confederation. That threatened to plunge the disunited states into a civil war called Shay’s Rebellion.
After the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts’s legislature imposed high taxes to pay war debts. Rural farmers could not pay these taxes because of the insufficiency of the land and only had enough money to feed their families. The demanding payment for hard currency from Europe pressured the eastern merchants for tax money. So, the merchants could no longer trade goods and services with the farmers, and had to ask …show more content…
The “Shaysites,” as the rebellious farmers were known, started to falter because of James Bowdoin the governor of Massachusetts at the time organized a military force funded by the eastern merchants to confront the rebels. Instead of co-operating with the farmers to settle their differences. Early winter of 1787 the Shaysites had few arms or supplies and they marched to Springfield Amory on January 25, 1787 in hopes that they would break in and gain the stock of guns and ammunition there. In its place, met a line of armed men led by General Benjamin Lincoln. The army fired warning shots followed by artillery fire, killing four insurgents and the rebel force quickly faltered to the country side of Petersham. Many participants were later captured but the band of angry farmers decided to attack again in Sheffield and the conflict was deemed over for the last battle in Shay’s

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