Wonky Pundit
USMB's Silent Snowden
I never realized there were quite this many historical parallels. Cool!
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Shay's Rebellion was such a crisis. Rooted in economic anxiety and political turmoil, it even involved a leader of a tea party.
The country had incurred massive debt during the Revolutionary War. But it couldn't pay it off because the Colonists, distrusting "big government," had created the Articles of Confederation to run the country, which weakened the authority of a central government.
The result was anarchy.
The federal government wasn't allowed to raise taxes to pay off war debts. Various states responded with crushing taxes. Shady bankers in states such as Massachusetts foreclosed on farmers' homes and threw people in debtors' prison. Some thought the country would dissolve.
The political leaders in Massachusetts, though, didn't seem to care, says Daniel Klinghard, author of "The Nationalization of American Political Parties, 1880-1896."
"The state Legislature was completely out of touch with the excruciating economic difficulties that people were going through," Klinghard says.
That's when Daniel Shays entered the picture. The Massachusetts farmer had fought in the Revolutionary War, only to return home and find himself -- like many fellow citizens -- facing foreclosure. He decided to fight back.
In 1786, he raised a private citizens' army called the "Shaysites." They marched on and shut down a debtors' court in Massachusetts and tried to storm a state arsenal. Samuel Adams, one of the Founding Fathers who had planned the Boston Tea Party, called for their capture and death.
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