Shays’ Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government’s increased efforts to collect taxes on both individuals and their trades.
In the summer of 1786, farmers in western Massachusetts were heavily in debt, facing imprisonment and the loss of their lands. Many of them were veterans, who owed taxes that had gone unpaid while they were away fighting the British during the Revolution. The Continental Congress had promised to pay them for their service, but the national government did not have sufficient money. Moreover, the farmers were unable to meet the onerous new tax burden Massachusetts imposed in order to pay its own debts from the American Revolution.
Led by Daniel Shays, the heavily indebted farmers marched to a local courthouse demanding relief. Faced with the refusal of many Massachusetts militiamen to arrest the rebels, with whom they sympathized, the governor of Massachusetts called upon the national government for aid, but none was forthcoming. The uprising was finally brought to an end the following year by a privately funded militia.
Shays’s Rebellion brought home the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. The US government had both failed to pay its veterans and failed to raise a militia in order to put down a rebellion. It had become clear the US government’s inability to impose taxes, regulate commerce, or raise an army hindered its ability to defend the nation or pay its debts.