Economic Changes During The War Of Independence

During the War of Independence, individual states and Congress had issued fiduciary notes to finance United States military operations. The fiduciary notes were paper money that the government promised to redeem at some time in the future. When the future arrived in the 1780s, the holders of these promissory notes demanded redemption, and the states, including Massachusetts, were raising taxes to pay them.

As the story is told, many farmers were too poor to pay their taxes, so the courts sent them to jail and seized their farms. Farmers were also indebted to merchants who had sold them goods on credit. With the closure of the British Antilles to US commerce, merchants, under pressure from their creditors, now demanded payment. To avoid paying their debts, the story continues, Daniel Shays and some other 'miserable officers' of the Revolution led the camp mob to close the courts. Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin called the militia to end the uprising. When they failed to do the job, he turned to the rich Bostonians to finance a temporary army.

The G overnment-friendly versions of the insurgency spread across all states and bothered many elites, including George Washington, who was enjoying a peaceful retreat in Mount Vernon. David Humphreys, one of Washington's former assistants who lived in New Haven, told him that the uprising was due to a licentious spirit among the people, whom he called llevelers determinaded to annihilate all public and private debts.

The Shays regulators, as described by the rebels, were outraged by the new state constitution and the way in which it had been ratified. A meager and partisan convention had approved it without his consent.

In general, the power of the rich and the well-born increased. Although it included a bill of rights, white male taxpayers had to be worth at least 60 pounds to vote, which was 20 pounds more than their colonial letter under the king. It allowed the house to carry out its activities when only 60 members were present, favoring the most capable of attending during the winter, the Boston merchant elite. It also established an independent judiciary and a senate, none of which responds to the people, as well as a clause prohibiting any amendment to the Constitution for at least 15 years.