Making a New Constitution: 1787-1788

Introduction

In the wake of post-revolutionary economic chaos, domestic upheaval, and insurrections such as Shays's Rebellion, a growing number of U.S. citizens were clamoring for some kind of change in American government. Many Americans, particularly nationalistic elites, worried that the new nation was facing an uncertain future because its government was simply too weak to be effective.

Discussion

The Need for Stronger Government

Advocates for stronger national government, who had not gotten far in their bid to increase the power of Congress since the end of the Revolutionary War, received a boost from Shays's Rebellion. The loosely coordinated rebellion of debtors in Western Massachusetts, which had led armed men to close down courts and to threaten government officials throughout late 1786, opened the year 1787 as a great topic of public concern. To prepare in case the military conflict escalated, James Bowdoin, the governor of Massachusetts, called up thousands of state militia forces late in 1786 and placed them under the command of former Revolutionary War general Benjamin Lincoln. Though Shays's men seemed to lose some of their enthusiasm during the coldest part of the New England winter, the stage was set for Massachusetts men, with many Revolutionary War veterans on both sides, to take up arms against one another (Szatmary, pp. 110-13).

The military phase of Shays's Rebellion came to a head in January 1787, when a group of Shaysite rebels planned to seize the weapons stored at the arsenal in Springfield, Massachusetts. On January 21, some 300 rebels surrounded the arsenal and trapped Gen. William Shepherd and his militia troops inside. After four days, mainly spent marching around the perimeter of the Springfield armory, the Shays rebels attacked the arsenal but were dispersed when the troops inside fired on them with cannon and grapeshot. Shays's forces were dismantled on February 4, when Lincoln invaded their camp at Petersham, Massachusetts, with 3,000 militia troops. By the end of the month, Shays himself had fled Massachusetts for New York, Vermont, and then Canada. From late February into April, small bands of Shaysite rebels, bolstered by new supplies and weapons given to them by British officials in Canada, tried to renew their attacks against lawyers and militia leaders, but they were never again able to mount a coordinated armed insurgency (Singletary, pp. 15-16).

Daniel Shays and his band of disgruntled debtors probably never posed a serious threat to the continuance of government in Massachusetts, but they had enough sympathizers in the state and elsewhere that nationalists were able to capitalize on the fright their military actions inspired. Thomas Jefferson, serving abroad as U.S. minister to France, was unconcerned by the rebellion, declaring in a letter: “Let them take arms. . . . the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants”. But his was the minority opinion among the elite class of politicians. Average Americans continued to push for a better government solution to the country's financial and trade crises, and many in power argued ...