Post #3632891

2026-07-06 16:59 UTC

Shays’ brief revolt was not successful and Shays himself had to flee into hiding for a time, but the revolt had a major impact on the thinking of American elites. The public was opposed to paying debts or taxes to finance those elites, and it had created governments to empower the public to erase debts. Where governments were more favorable to creditors, the public staged revolts. This was intolerable. Even worse, the governing charter of the new US republic, the Articles of Confederation, created a weak central government that struggled to raise money to finance its operations. The central government, for example, failed to raise an army to confront Shays’ Rebellion; the rebels were ultimately suppressed by a local Massachusetts army that was *privately funded* by wealthy elites in that state. 7/

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@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social 2026-07-06 17:03

A convention was called in 1787 to devise and offer amendments to the Articles of Confederation, but the attendees decided that amending the Articles was not enough. What they needed was to *crush democracy* and the mechanism they settled on was the US constitution. The elites who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 in what came to be known as the Constitutional Convention decided on a governing document that would preserve the appearance of representative democracy while ensuring the permanent rule of a class of wealthy, propertied elites This is why historian Michael Klarman refers to the constitution as a *coup* by those elites against the democratic governments that Americans were experimenting with at the time. 8/

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