Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection

Marion Starkey's, "A Little Rebellion", is a good read, but the meat and potatoes are in the book, "Shay's Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection", by Mr. David P. Szatmary. In Mr. Szatmary's book, government preferment of commercial interests over and defeat of the majority, independent "yeoman" farmers, was an object lesson. It has also proven to be an harbinger of things to come. "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing..", wrote Thomas Jefferson, but his sentiments are largely irrelevant. Now that the number of subsistence farmers is negligible, it has become easier in this global economy of wage-earners, to subvert feelings of independence and assert control. What is to keep the arrogance of our leaders in check, as when Washington National Airport was renamed as a monument to Ronald Reagan, memorializing his defeat of the Air Trafffic Controllers? What has kept me from buying "Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle" by Leonard L. Richards is that the description of it, along with the reviews I have read, lead me to suppose that Mr.Richards has simply re-framed the event and shown it in another light.

Shays' Rebellion is often dismissed in the history books as an isolated incident following the American Revolution. Sometimes, it's grudingly given credit for spurring the Constitution Convention. In this well-balanced book, David P. Szatmary devotes the time and study necessary to classify Shays' Rebellion as the historical watershed it truly is. Shays' Rebellion signified more than economically depressed New England farmers waging war on creditors; it marked the beginning of the end of the American subsistence farmer. This change in an accepted way of life was at least as painful as the birth of the new United States. Szatmary chronicles how international influences forced a change in how merchants, farmers and artisans interacted, and how the initial changes brought friction. The rebellion resulting from this friction in turn revealed how ineffective the Articles of Confederation were in dealing with a crisis that could destroy the country. Szatmary links the state's governments weakness to the Constitution by using newspaper and editorial accounts of the day to provide a well-rounded view of an overlooked milestone.