Shay's Rebellion

Daniel Shays was angry. The Massachusetts farmer had fought bravely in the Revolution. But five years after the war, he believed that he and his neighbors were being treated unfairly by the state. Farmers were earning less and paying more taxes. Many were deeply in debt. They asked the state for relief, but got none.

So Daniel Shays took action.

Late in 1786, Shays led 600 angry people to the courthouse in Springfield. They wanted the judges to stop putting debtors in jail. The state militia scattered the crowd, but the unrest spread.

In January, 1787, Shays led a band of men against the arsenal in Springfield. The militia opened fire and routed the rebels. Shays fled to Vermont and conducted raids across the border. But he was soon captured. Although he and 13 others were condemned to death, they were eventually pardoned.

Shays’ Rebellion pointed out the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, the loose association of states that was adopted after the Revolution. Many Americans felt they needed a stronger federal government, with the power to deal with the rebellions that crossed state borders. When the new U.S. Constitution was proposed in 1787, it was quickly ratified by Massachusetts.

It is rarely taught that Daniel Shays had fought during the Revolution and while doing so he met the Marquis de Lafayette.  The Marquise gave Shays a valuable sword.   Unfortunately, Shays had to sell the sword during the postwar hard times.

The image with this post is Daniel Shays, on the left....as portrayed  in Bickerstaff's Boston Almanack.

Barbara Jordan

“My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, and it is total,” Congresswoman Barbara Jordan told a national television audience on July 25, 1974.   She was not about to stand by and watch “the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”  At that time, Jordan was participating in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on President Richard Nixon’s serious abuse of presidential powers.  Jordan’s vote again Nixon helped lead to the President’s resignation in August.

A brilliant scholar and a thrilling orator, Jordan became the first African-American elected to Congress since the 1870s.  Her eloquent denunciation of Nixon at the committee hearings in 1974 stirred the nation.  Two years later, she became the first black woman to deliver the keynote address at a Democratic National Convention.  Her presence there, she noted, proved that “the American Dream need not forever be deferred.”  After retiring from Congress in 1979, Jordan taught at the University of Texas in Austin.   In 1992, though confined to a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis, she again addressed a Democratic convention.  Less than four years later, however, she died at the age of 59.   President Lyndon B. Johnson once said Jordan “proved that black is beautiful before we knew what [the saying] meant.”

Jordan’s love of and respect for the U.S. Constitution was so great that she always carried a copy of the document in her purse.

The Constitutional Convention

Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787

On May 25, 1787, representatives of 12 American states met at Philadelphia. Only five years earlier, these states had defeated the British and had become independent. They then banded together under an agreement called the Articles of Confederation. But now they needed a better agreement – a constitution outlining a unified democratic government.

Delegates included James Madison and George Washington of Virginia, Alexander Hamilton of New York, and old Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania, among 51 others. They debated long and hard over many issues. How much power would the new federal government have and how much would be kept by the states? Who would make national laws? Who would enforce those laws? Gradually the delegates worked out their differences. The Constitution they agreed upon called for three branches of government – the legislative (Congress) to make the laws, the executive (the President) to enforce the laws, and the judicial (the Supreme Court) to interpret the laws.

The new constitution went into effect in 1789 when nine of the 13 state state governments approved, or ratified, it. It has been the main governing document of the US for more than 200 years. And it has been used as a model by name newer nations.

Rhode Island sent no delegates to Philadelphia and was the last state to ratify the Constitution.