The New Nation

C H A P T E R

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CHAPTER OUTLINE

THE CRISIS OF THE 1780sEconomic CrisisState Remedies

Movement Toward a New NationalGovernment

THE NEW CONSTITUTIONThe Constitutional ConventionRatifying the New Constitution

The Bill of Rights

THE FIRST ADMINISTRATIONThe Washington PresidencyAn Active Federal Judiciary

Hamiltons Controversial Fiscal ProgramThe Beginnings of Foreign Policy

The United States and the Indian PeoplesSpanish Florida and British CanadaDomestic and International Crises

Jays and Pinckneys TreatiesWashingtons Farewell Address

FEDERALISTS ANDJEFFERSONIAN REPUBLICANS

The Rise of Political PartiesThe Adams Presidency

The Alien and Sedition ActsThe Revolution of 1800

Democratic Political Culture

THE RISING GLORY OFAMERICA

American ArtistsThe Liberty of the Press

The Birth of American LiteratureWomen on the Intellectual Scene

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A Rural Massachusetts Community Rises in Defense

everal hundred farmers from the town of Pelham andscores of other rural communities in westernMassachusetts converged on the court house in

Northampton, the county seat, before sunrise on Tuesday, August29, 1786. They arrived in military formation, fifes playing anddrums beating, armed with muskets, broadswords, and cudgels, themens tricornered hats festooned with sprigs of evergreen, symbolsof freedom frequently worn by Yankee soldiers during the latewar for independence, which had ended only four years before. Atleast a third of the men and virtually all their officers were veter-ans. They were mustering once again in defense of their liberties.

In 1787, the country was in the midst of an economicdepression that had hit farm communities particularly hard. Theprices for agricultural commodities were at historic lows, yetcountry merchants and shopkeepers refused to advance credit,insisting that purchases and debt repayment be made in hardcurrency. Two-thirds of the men who marched on Northamptonhad been sued for debt, and many had spent time in debtorsprison. Dozens of rural towns petitioned the state governmentfor relief, but not only did the merchant-dominated legislaturereject their pleas, it raised the property tax in order to pay offthe enormous debt the state had accumulated during theRevolution. The new tax was considerably more oppressive thanany levied by the British before the Revolution, and was evenmore odious since the revenue would go to a small group ofwealthy eastern men, to whom the debt was owed.

Massachusetts farmers decided to take matters into theirown hands. When outsiders threatened a mans property, they

argued, the community had the right, indeed the duty, to rise upin defense. During the Revolution, armed men had marched onthe courts, shutting down the operation of government, andnow they were doing it again. The Northampton judges had nochoice but to close the court, and that success led to similaractions in many other Massachusetts counties. We have latelyemerged from a bloody war in which liberty was the gloriousprize, one man declared, and in this glorious cause I am deter-mined to stand with firmness and resolution.

This uprising quickly became known as Shays Rebellion,after Daniel Shays, a decorated revolutionary officer and one ofthe leaders from the town of Pelham. Although rebellion wasmost widespread in the state of Massachusetts, similar disordersoccurred in New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maryland,and Virginia. Conservatives around the country were throwninto panic. The rebels, Secretary of War Henry Knox wrote toGeorge Washington, planned to seize the property of the wealthyand redistribute it to the poor. In the opinion of Washingtonsformer aide Colonel David Humphreys of Connecticut, therebels were levelers determined to annihilate all debts pub-lic and private. Washington agreed, and worried that rebellionthreatened to break out everywhere. There are combustibles inevery State which a spark might set fire to.

Washington and other conservative leaders saw ShaysRebellion as a class conflict that pitted poor against rich, debtoragainst creditor. Yet the residents of Pelham and other ruraltowns acted in common, without regard to rank or property.Big farmers and small farmers alike marched on the county court.They came from tight-knit communities, bound together byfamily and kinship. Among the group of one hundred Pelhamresidents who marched on Northampton, for example, therewere twelve men from the Grey family, eight Johnsons, sixMcMillans. More than two-thirds of the men were accompaniedby kinsmen. Whether well-to-do or poor, they considered them-selves husbandmen, and they directed their protest againstoutsiders, the urban residents of Boston and other coastaltowns. I am a man that gets his living by hard labor, one rebelannounced, and I think that husbandry is as honest a calling

Pelham

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as any in the world. The country would be a lot better off, heconcluded, if there were less white shirts and more black frocks.

The crisis ended in Massachusetts when a militia force raisedby white shirts in the eastern part of the state, and financed bythe great merchants, marched west and crushed the Shaysites inJanuary 1787. Daniel Shays fled the state and never returned. Fifteenof the leaders were tried and sentenced to death; two were hangedbefore the remainder were pardoned, and some four thousand otherfarmers temporarily lost their right to vote, to sit on juries, or to holdoffice. Yet many of them considered their rebellion a success. Thenext year, Massachusetts voters threw out the old governor andelected a new legislature, which passed a moratorium on debts andcut taxes to only 10 percent of what they had been.

The most important consequence of Shays Rebellion, how-ever, would be its effect on conservative nationalists unhappywith the distribution of power between the states and nationalgovernment under the Articles of Confederation. Withoutsome alteration in our political creed, Washington wrote toJames Madison, the superstructure we have been seven yearsin raising, at the expence of so much blood and treasure, mustfall. We are fast verging to anarchy and confusion! The upris-ing wrought prodigious changes in the minds of men respect-ing the powers of government, Henry Knox noted. Everybodysays they must be strengthened and that unless this shall beeffected, there is no security for liberty and property. The timehad come, he declared, to clip the wings of a mad democracy.

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The Crisis of the 1780s

T he depression of the mid-1780s and the political protests it generated wereinstrumental in the development of strong nationalist sentiment amongthe elite circles of American life. In the aftermath of Shays Rebellion, thesesentiments coalesced into a powerful political movement dedicated to strengtheningthe national government.

Economic CrisisThe economic crisis had its origins in the Revolution. The shortage of goods result-ing from the British blockade, the demand for supplies by the army and the militias,and the flood of paper currency issued by the Confederation Congress and the statescombined to create the worst inflation in American history. United States dollarstraded against Spanish dollars at the rate of 3 to 1 in 1777, 40 to 1 in 1779, and 146to 1 in 1781, by which time Congress had issued more than $190 million in currency(see Figure 8-1). Most of this paper money ended up in the hands of merchants whohad paid only a fraction of its face value.

After the war ended, inflation gave way to depression. Political revolutioncould not alter economic realities: the independent United States continued to be

WHAT WERE the tensions andconflicts between local and national

authorities in the decades after the

American Revolution?

The tensions and conflicts between local and national authorities in the decades after the American Revolution

The struggle to draft the Constitution and to achieve its ratification

Establishment of the first national government under the Constitution

The beginning of American political parties

The first stirrings of an authentic American national culture

Shays Rebellion An armed movement of debt-ridden farmers in westernMassachusetts in the winter of 17861787.The rebellion created a crisis atmosphere.

Nationalists Group of leaders in the 1780s who spearheaded the drive to replace the Articles of Confederationwith a stronger central government.

Military Report on Shays Rebellion

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a supplier of raw materials and an importer of manufactured prod-ucts, and Great Britain remained the countrys most important trad-ing partner. In 1784, British merchants began dumping goods in theAmerican market, offering easy terms of credit. But the production ofexportable goods had been drastically reduced by the fighting, andthus the trade deficit with Britain for the period 178486 rose toapproximately 3 million (see Figure 8-2). The deficit acted like amagnet, drawing hard currency from American accounts, leaving thecountry with little silver coin in circulation. Commercial banks insistedon the repayment of old loans and refused to issue new ones. By theend of 1784, the country had fallen into the grip of economic depres-sion, and within two years, prices had fallen by 25 percent.

The depression struck while the nation was attempting to dig outfrom the huge mountain of debt incurred during the Revolution.Creditors were owed more than $50 million by national and state gov