Constitutional & Federal Era
Shalin Revels
Shays Rebellion
- Shays Rebellion was an armed uprising in Massachusetts during 1786 and 1787.
- Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shay led four thousand rebels (called Shaysites) in rising up against perceived economic injustices by Massachusetts.
- The continent-wide shortage of currency, merchants began to demand the same from their local business partners, including merchants operating in the market towns in the state's interior.
- John Hancock, did not impose hard currency demands on poorer borrowers and refused to actively prosecute the collection of delinquent taxes
XYZ Affair
- The XYZ Affair was a political and diplomatic episode in 1797 and 1798, early in the administration of John Adams, involving a confrontation between the United States and Republican France that led to an undeclared war called the Quasi-War.
- The letters X, Y and Z for the names of French diplomats Hottinguer (X), Bellamy (Y), and Hauteval (Z) in documents released by the Adams administration.
- President Adams learned that Charles CotesWorth Pinckney had been refused as U.S. minister because of the escalating crisis, and that American merchant ships had been seized in the Caribbean.
Whiskey's Rebellion
- was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791, during the Presidency of George Washington.
- Throughout counties in Western Pennsylvania, protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting the tax.
- The whiskey tax was repealed after Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party which opposed Hamilton's Federalist Party, came to power in 1801.