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

The Shays insubordination 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 gruntle their growing discontent with the national government 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 even the government of the day no seven-day accepted them in form of taxes. The compensation woes notwithstanding, the immediate sealing off of the British agricultural markets proper(a) 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 turned on small debtors seizing properties including land to service loans. The states and th e Confederations immediate economic amends 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 appeal the Massachusetts legislature to revise the states constitution to enable fair taxation, equal representation, air paper money and/or pass 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 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 profligate in their manners, encouragers of foreign manufacturers.6 As the economy i ncreasingly 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,