Notes

In August 1786, Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led an armed rebellion in Springfield, Massachusetts to protest what he perceived as the unjust economic policies and political corruption of the Massachusetts state legislature

Shays’s Rebellion exposed the weakness of the government under the Articles of Confederation and led many—including George Washington—to call for strengthening the federal government in order to put down future uprisings.

The rebellion, which revived the rhetoric of the American Revolution, shaped the debate over the proper scope and authority of the US government that ultimately resulted in the creation of the US Constitution.

Daniel Shays, born in Massachusetts in 1747 to Irish immigrants
Shays was a landless farm laborer when the Revolutionary War broke out.
He joined the local militia, fought in the Battles of Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Lexington, and rose to the rank of captain in the Fifth Massachusetts Regiment.
He was wounded in battle and never got paid for his military service.
When in 1780 he returned home to Brookfield, a rural area west of Boston, he found that he was being taken to court for debts that went unpaid while he was off fighting the war.
Since he had not been compensated for his service, he had no way of paying these debts.

After attending several town meetings, Shays discovered that many other veterans and farmers were in the same situation. They banded together to petition the Massachusetts state legislature for debt relief. The legislature was at that time dominated by Eastern banking and merchant elites who did not understand the plight of rural communities. All proposals for debt relief were rejected.

Massachusetts Governor John Hancock—signer of the Declaration of Independence—had refused to prosecute debtors for back taxes. But, in early 1785—perhaps anticipating trouble ahead—he resigned his post, claiming poor health. He was replaced by James Bowdoin, who took a much more confrontational approach. While Bowdoin initiated civil actions to collect delinquent tax debts, the state legislature imposed even more taxes.

In August 1786, the Massachusetts legislature adjourned without addressing the petitions for debt relief from the state’s rural communities. On August 29, a group of protestors, calling themselves the Regulators, converged on Northampton to stop the county court from convening.

On January 25, 1787, Shays led a group of nearly 1,200 protestors on a march to the federal armory in Springfield. Bowdoin’s private militia was waiting for them, and the resulting skirmish left four of Shays’s followers dead and 20 wounded

The convention was the site of spirited debate over the size, scope, and structure of the federal government, and its result was the United States Constitution.

Between May and September 1787, delegates from 12 states convened in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, which had proven insufficient to cope with the challenges facing the young nation.

The notorious Three-Fifths Compromise apportioned representation to the southern slaveholding states in a scheme that counted five enslaved men and women as three.

James Madison proposed the Virginia Plan, which called for a bicameral legislature in which representation would be based on population. The larger states supported this plan because it would accord them greater representation based on their more numerous populations. However, the smaller states opposed it and submitted a competing proposal, the New Jersey Plan. According to this scheme, which was basically inherited from the Articles of Confederation, the legislature would be unicameral and each state would have a single vote.