Reference no: EM133311154

Case: Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts that was due to increasing debts and the state government's efforts to collect taxes both on individuals and their trades. It was also an example of the dangers and limits to the Articles of Confederation. You've learned about Shays' Rebellion in the readings for this week and in the lecture videos.
This primary source assignment asks you to compare what many political leaders in the United States had to say about the rebellion while it was going on. Review the writings of these leaders and then answer the questions below.

Thomas Jefferson (First Secretary of State, Third President)

"The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honorably conducted?...God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion....If they [the people] remain quiet...it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order."

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical....An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."

Benjamin Franklin (Ambassador to France)

"I am glad to see by the papers, that our grand machine has at length begun to work. I pray God to bless and guide its operations. If any form of government is capable of making a nation happy, ours I think bids fair now for producing that effect. But, after all, much depends upon the people who are to be governed. We have been guarding against an evil that old States are most liable to, excess of power in the rulers; but our present danger seems to be defect of obedience in the subjects. There is hope, however, from the enlightened state of this age and country, we may guard effectually against that evil as well as the rest."

Elbridge Gerry (Governor of Massachusetts)

"The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue; but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Massts. It has been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute."

George Washington (General and First President)

" No morn ever dawned more favorably than ours did; and no day was ever more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm....Without some alteration in our political creed, the superstructure we have been seven years raising at the expense of so much blood and treasure, must fall. We are fast verging to anarchy and confusion!"

Samuel Adams (Member of the "Sons of Liberty" and involved in the Boston Tea Party)

"[Those who] would lessen the Weight of Government lawfully exercised must be Enemies to our happy Revolution and Common Liberty."

"In monarchies the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death."

In your answer to each question, be sure to include evidence from the above quotations.
Questions:

1) What was Thomas Jefferson's perspective on the rebellion?

2) What were Jefferson's primary concerns?

3) What did Benjamin Franklin and Elbridge Gerry see as the greatest problems that the country faced?

4) What solution did George Washington propose for solving the problems the nation faced?

5) Daniel Shays felt his rebellion was following in the footsteps of the American Revolution. What was different about it, from Samuel Adams's perspective?

6) Overall, what problem did most of these leaders perceive? What would be the solution? Consider all of the documents here, but try to incorporate the excerpts from Franklin, Gerry, and Washington into your ideas.