The Shays Rebellion and the Origins of Sound Governance in the US Essay

The Shays Rebellion and the Origins of Sound Governance in the US - Essay ExampleWith the cash flow literally gagged, the continental war veterans who had earlier received land as part of their compensation in order to quell their growing discontent with the national presidency found their only source of livelihoods threatened. Their usual receipt of continental notes, which would have provided them with a reprieve, had lost substantial value that however the government of the day no longer accepted them in form of taxes. The compensation woes notwithstanding, the immediate sealing off of the British agricultural markets right after the war made the situation, even more, worse large stock inventories piled up, prompting a merchants dilemma of the repayment of the hitherto advanced agricultural debts. Unable to settle the outstanding debt with the English creditors, merchants glowering on small debtors seizing properties including land to service loans. The states and the Confedera tions immediate economic remedy of raising taxes to fund the war debts stretched the already worse state of affairs even further. With the economy largely reduced into the traditional barter system, farmers and rural artisans essentially owed creditors and the tax man cash that was literally nonexistent. Their farmers attempts to petition the Massachusetts legislature to revise the states constitution to enable fair taxation, equal representation, issue paper money and/or slip by tender laws that would permit debtors to service their loans in goods and services alongside the hard currency bore no fruits.5 A legislature dominated by commercial message interests, the proposed reforms never featured beyond the petition. Rather than being sympathetic enough to the protesters genuine public concern, assemblymen responded with contempt charging thatThey, the people, are luxurious in their diet, idle and blood line in their manners, encouragers of foreign manufacturers.6 As the economy increasingly worsened, they debtors/farmers found themselves hauled up in losing court battles with quite a number of defaulters ending up in state prisons an ultimate fate that was probably imminent for Daniel Shays,