In Debt to Shays

In Debt to Shays PDF Author: Robert A. Gross
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813913544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
In Debt to Shays takes a fresh perspective on the rebellion by challenging existing understandings of late eighteenth-century America and restoring the rebellion to its historical context

In Debt to Shays

In Debt to Shays PDF Author: Robert A. Gross
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813913544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
In Debt to Shays takes a fresh perspective on the rebellion by challenging existing understandings of late eighteenth-century America and restoring the rebellion to its historical context

Shays's Rebellion

Shays's Rebellion PDF Author: Leonard L. Richards
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
During the bitter winter of 1786-87, Daniel Shays, a modest farmer and Revolutionary War veteran, and his compatriot Luke Day led an unsuccessful armed rebellion against the state of Massachusetts. Their desperate struggle was fueled by the injustice of a regressive tax system and a conservative state government that seemed no better than British colonial rule. But despite the immediate failure of this local call-to-arms in the Massachusetts countryside, the event fundamentally altered the course of American history. Shays and his army of four thousand rebels so shocked the young nation's governing elite—even drawing the retired General George Washington back into the service of his country—that ultimately the Articles of Confederation were discarded in favor of a new constitution, the very document that has guided the nation for more than two hundred years, and brought closure to the American Revolution. The importance of Shays's Rebellion has never been fully appreciated, chiefly because Shays and his followers have always been viewed as a small group of poor farmers and debtors protesting local civil authority. In Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle, Leonard Richards reveals that this perception is misleading, that the rebellion was much more widespread than previously thought, and that the participants and their supporters actually represented whole communities—the wealthy and the poor, the influential and the weak, even members of some of the best Massachusetts families. Through careful examination of contemporary records, including a long-neglected but invaluable list of the participants, Richards provides a clear picture of the insurgency, capturing the spirit of the rebellion, the reasons for the revolt, and its long-term impact on the participants, the state of Massachusetts, and the nation as a whole. Shays's Rebellion, though seemingly a local affair, was the revolution that gave rise to modern American democracy.

Shays' Rebellion

Shays' Rebellion PDF Author: Blake Hoena
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 1666323039
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description


Shays's Rebellion

Shays's Rebellion PDF Author: Sean Condon
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142141743X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
A masterful telling of a complicated story, Shays's Rebellion is aimed at scholars and students of American history.

Shays' Rebellion

Shays' Rebellion PDF Author: David P. Szatmary
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Shays' Rebellion is often dismissed in the history books as an isolated incident following the American Revolution. Sometimes, it's grudingly given credit for spurring the Constitution Convention. In this well-balanced book, David P. Szatmary devotes the time and study necessary to classify Shays' Rebellion as the historical watershed it truly is. Shays' Rebellion signified more than economically depressed New England farmers waging war on creditors; it marked the beginning of the end of the American subsistence farmer. This change in an accepted way of life was at least as painful as the birth of the new United States. Szatmary chronicles how international influences forced a change in how merchants, farmers and artisans interacted, and how the initial changes brought friction. The rebellion resulting from this friction in turn revealed how ineffective the Articles of Confederation were in dealing with a crisis that could destroy the country. Szatmary links the state's governments weakness to the Constitution by using newspaper and editorial accounts of the day to provide a well-rounded view of an overlooked milestone.

We Have Not a Government

We Have Not a Government PDF Author: George William Van Cleve
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022664152X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
In 1783, as the Revolutionary War came to a close, Alexander Hamilton resigned in disgust from the Continental Congress after it refused to consider a fundamental reform of the Articles of Confederation. Just four years later, that same government collapsed, and Congress grudgingly agreed to support the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, which altered the Articles beyond recognition. What occurred during this remarkably brief interval to cause the Confederation to lose public confidence and inspire Americans to replace it with a dramatically more flexible and powerful government? We Have Not a Government is the story of this contentious moment in American history. In George William Van Cleve’s book, we encounter a sharply divided America. The Confederation faced massive war debts with virtually no authority to compel its members to pay them. It experienced punishing trade restrictions and strong resistance to American territorial expansion from powerful European governments. Bitter sectional divisions that deadlocked the Continental Congress arose from exploding western settlement. And a deep, long-lasting recession led to sharp controversies and social unrest across the country amid roiling debates over greatly increased taxes, debt relief, and paper money. Van Cleve shows how these remarkable stresses transformed the Confederation into a stalemate government and eventually led previously conflicting states, sections, and interest groups to advocate for a union powerful enough to govern a continental empire. Touching on the stories of a wide-ranging cast of characters—including John Adams, Patrick Henry, Daniel Shays, George Washington, and Thayendanegea—Van Cleve makes clear that it was the Confederation’s failures that created a political crisis and led to the 1787 Constitution. Clearly argued and superbly written, We Have Not a Government is a must-read history of this crucial period in our nation’s early life.

Daniel Shays's Honorable Rebellion

Daniel Shays's Honorable Rebellion PDF Author: Daniel Bullen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781594164170
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
On January 25, 1787, in Springfield, Massachusetts, militia Major General William Shepard ordered his cannon to fire grapeshot at a peaceful demonstration of 1,200 farmers approaching the federal arsenal. The shots killed four and wounded twenty, marking the climax of five months of civil disobedience in Massachusetts, where farmers challenged the state's authority to seize their farms for flagrantly unjust taxes. Government leaders and influential merchants painted these protests as a violent attempt to overthrow the state, in hopes of garnering support for strengthening the federal government in a Constitutional Convention. As a result, the protests have been hidden for more than two hundred years under the misleading title, "Shays's Rebellion, the armed uprising that led to the Constitution." But this widely accepted narrative is just a legend: the "rebellion" was almost entirely nonviolent, and retired Revolutionary War hero Daniel Shays was only one of many leaders. Daniel Shays's Honorable Rebellion: An American Story by Daniel Bullen tells the history of the crisis from the protesters' perspective. Through five months of nonviolent protests, the farmers kept courts throughout Massachusetts from hearing foreclosures, facing down threats from the government, which escalated to the point that Governor James Bowdoin ultimately sent an army to arrest them. Even so, the people won reforms in an electoral landslide. Thomas Jefferson called these protests an honorable rebellion, and hoped that Americans would never let twenty years pass without such a campaign, to rein in powerful interests. This riveting and meticulously researched narrative shows that Shays and his fellow protesters were hardly a dangerous rabble, but rather a proud people who banded together peaceably, risking their lives for justice in a quintessentially American story.

The Contrast

The Contrast PDF Author: Cynthia A. Kierner
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814783430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
“The Contrast“, which premiered at New York City's John Street Theater in 1787, was the first American play performed in public by a professional theater company. The play, written by New England-born, Harvard-educated, Royall Tyler was timely, funny, and extremely popular. When the play appeared in print in 1790, George Washington himself appeared at the head of its list of hundreds of subscribers. Reprinted here with annotated footnotes by historian Cynthia A. Kierner, Tyler’s play explores the debate over manners, morals, and cultural authority in the decades following American Revolution. Did the American colonists' rejection of monarchy in 1776 mean they should abolish all European social traditions and hierarchies? What sorts of etiquette, amusements, and fashions were appropriate and beneficial? Most important, to be a nation, did Americans need to distinguish themselves from Europeans—and, if so, how? Tyler was not the only American pondering these questions, and Kierner situates the play in its broader historical and cultural contexts. An extensive introduction provides readers with a background on life and politics in the United States in 1787, when Americans were in the midst of nation-building. The book also features a section with selections from contemporary letters, essays, novels, conduct books, and public documents, which debate issues of the era.

The Winter Hero

The Winter Hero PDF Author: James Lincoln Collier
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
ISBN: 1620644827
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
Justin Conkey was too young to fight in the Revolution of 1776, but now it is 1787 and he is fourteen. Justin is ready to fight, even if he has only his father's old sword to protect him. But once on the battlefield, war is not what he expected. It is dangerous and frightening and nothing makes sense. Throughout a particularly bitter winter the young man is desperate to prove that he too can be a hero—not realizing that many times heroes turn out to be just ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, who do what comes naturally to save others regardless of risk to themselves. Insisting on joining General Daniel Shays' group of Regulators, he lies about his age and marches with the group throughout New England. But war puts friendships and political convictions to the test.

Ratification

Ratification PDF Author: Pauline Maier
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684868555
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
The dramatic story of the debate over the ratification of the Constitution, the first new account of this seminal moment in American history in years.