Constitutional Era
Javon Bentley
Shays Rebellion
- Shays’ Rebellion is the name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt.
- Although farmers took up arms in states from New Hampshire to South Carolina, the rebellion was most serious in Massachusetts, where bad harvests, economic depression, and high taxes threatened farmers with the loss of their farms.
- The rebellion took its name from its symbolic leader, Daniel Shays of Massachusetts, a former captain in the Continental army.
Whiskey Rebellion
- In 1794 thousands of farmers in western Pennsylvania took up arms in opposition to the enforcement of a federal law calling for the imposition of an excise tax on distilled spirits.
- The "Whiskey Rebellion," this insurrection represented the largest organized resistance against federal authority between the american revolution and the civil war.
- A number of the whiskey rebels were prosecuted for treason in what were the first such legal proceedings in the United States.
Constitutional Convention
70 delegates had been appointed by the original states to attend the Constitutional Convention, but only 55 were able to be there.
Rhode Island was the only state to not send any delegates at all.