2 Shays’s Rebellion Quiz

PDF page 409: One of the most serious challenges to the Confederation government, and an important impetus to calling for a constitutional convention, came in the form of a “rebellion,” or what Alexander Hamilton called a Massachusetts

PDF page 409: “civil war” led by a “desperate debtor,” Daniel Shays. Like farmers in many states, those of western Massachusetts suffered from high taxes, crushing debt, and widespread foreclosures. These farmers, in an effort to influence the legislature and governor in Boston and forestall foreclosures on their

PDF page 409: “civil war” led by a “desperate debtor,” Daniel Shays. Like farmers in many states, those of western Massachusetts suffered from high taxes, crushing debt, and widespread foreclosures. These farmers, in an effort to influence the legislature and governor in Boston and forestall foreclosures on their

PDF page 410: By fall, 1786, resistance to the policies of the Massachusetts state government had escalated to the point of an insurrection led by Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran. Marching through the countryside of Massachusetts, Shays and his men succeeded in taking over the Court of Common Pleas in Northampton, Massachusetts in an effort to prevent the trials of indebted farmers. The Governor of Massachusetts, with help from bankers and merchants in the eastern part of the state, raised troops and quickly crushed the rebellion. Despite the fact that Shays’s “rebels” numbered only 1,200, many of America’s most distinguished and reasoned leaders evidently believed that anarchy was about to consume all of the states and that Shays’s Rebellion might just be the spark that set it off. According to many, mob rule was at hand. James Madison, reading reports that set the number of farmers at 12,000, came to the conclusion that the whole affair had been instigated

PDF page 410: 1. the present system of taxation operated “unfairly between the poor

PDF page 410: and the wealthy classes”

PDF page 410: 5. “State government officials are being paid fattened salaries”

PDF page 410: 3. “farm goods [were] not accepted as payment for debts and taxes”

PDF page 410: By fall, 1786, resistance to the policies of the Massachusetts state government had escalated to the point of an insurrection led by Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran. Marching through the countryside of Massachusetts, Shays and his men succeeded in taking over the Court of Common Pleas in Northampton, Massachusetts in an effort to prevent the trials of indebted farmers. The Governor of Massachusetts, with help from bankers and merchants in the eastern part of the state, raised troops and quickly crushed the rebellion. Despite the fact that Shays’s “rebels” numbered only 1,200, many of America’s most distinguished and reasoned leaders evidently believed that anarchy was about to consume all of the states and that Shays’s Rebellion might just be the spark that set it off. According to many, mob rule was at hand. James Madison, reading reports that set the number of farmers at 12,000, came to the conclusion that the whole affair had been instigated

PDF page 410: By fall, 1786, resistance to the policies of the Massachusetts state government had escalated to the point of an insurrection led by Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran. Marching through the countryside of Massachusetts, Shays and his men succeeded in taking over the Court of Common Pleas in Northampton, Massachusetts in an effort to prevent the trials of indebted farmers. The Governor of Massachusetts, with help from bankers and merchants in the eastern part of the state, raised troops and quickly crushed the rebellion. Despite the fact that Shays’s “rebels” numbered only 1,200, many of America’s most distinguished and reasoned leaders evidently believed that anarchy was about to consume all of the states and that Shays’s Rebellion might just be the spark that set it off. According to many, mob rule was at hand. James Madison, reading reports that set the number of farmers at 12,000, came to the conclusion that the whole affair had been instigated

PDF page 410: By fall, 1786, resistance to the policies of the Massachusetts state government had escalated to the point of an insurrection led by Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran. Marching through the countryside of Massachusetts, Shays and his men succeeded in taking over the Court of Common Pleas in Northampton, Massachusetts in an effort to prevent the trials of indebted farmers. The Governor of Massachusetts, with help from bankers and merchants in the eastern part of the state, raised troops and quickly crushed the rebellion. Despite the fact that Shays’s “rebels” numbered only 1,200, many of America’s most distinguished and reasoned leaders evidently believed that anarchy was about to consume all of the states and that Shays’s Rebellion might just be the spark that set it off. According to many, mob rule was at hand. James Madison, reading reports that set the number of farmers at 12,000, came to the conclusion that the whole affair had been instigated

PDF page 410: By fall, 1786, resistance to the policies of the Massachusetts state government had escalated to the point of an insurrection led by Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran. Marching through the countryside of Massachusetts, Shays and his men succeeded in taking over the Court of Common Pleas in Northampton, Massachusetts in an effort to prevent the trials of indebted farmers. The Governor of Massachusetts, with help from bankers and merchants in the eastern part of the state, raised troops and quickly crushed the rebellion. Despite the fact that Shays’s “rebels” numbered only 1,200, many of America’s most distinguished and reasoned leaders evidently believed that anarchy was about to consume all of the states and that Shays’s Rebellion might just be the spark that set it off. According to many, mob rule was at hand. James Madison, reading reports that set the number of farmers at 12,000, came to the conclusion that the whole affair had been instigated

PDF page 410: By fall, 1786, resistance to the policies of the Massachusetts state government had escalated to the point of an insurrection led by Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran. Marching through the countryside of Massachusetts, Shays and his men succeeded in taking over the Court of Common Pleas in Northampton, Massachusetts in an effort to prevent the trials of indebted farmers. The Governor of Massachusetts, with help from bankers and merchants in the eastern part of the state, raised troops and quickly crushed the rebellion. Despite the fact that Shays’s “rebels” numbered only 1,200, many of America’s most distinguished and reasoned leaders evidently believed that anarchy was about to consume all of the states and that Shays’s Rebellion might just be the spark that set it off. According to many, mob rule was at hand. James Madison, reading reports that set the number of farmers at 12,000, came to the conclusion that the whole affair had been instigated

PDF page 410: by the British. Even George Washington cried out, “What, gracious God, is man that there should be such inconsistency and perfidiousness in his conduct?” Some leaders, however, took a view different from that of Washington and Madison, regarding Shays’s Rebellion as an almost legitimate form of popular protest, a sign of the vigor and political alertness of the populace and of their determination to guard their liberties. “What signify a few lives lost in a century or two,” Jefferson wrote. “The tree of

PDF page 410: tyrants. It is its natural manure.” In farmers. a letter, Jefferson explained himself artist: Unknown