Groups who were angry about America's earlier government?

For a TL idea that I have, a second revolution in America occurs in its newborn years. It starts out as Shays' Rebellion, but other groups get swept up in the anti-government fervor until it turns into a full-blown revolution and the federal government's incompetence largely is responsible for letting it happen. But I'm going to need other groups besides pissed off farmers. Conditions are that they can't be willing to participate for Federalist or anti-federalist reasons

All I have so far are wronged ARW veterans, who IOTL attempted to overthrow the government, known as the Newburgh Conspiracy.

Thank you for answering.

Shays' Rebellion was all of four years after

Shays' Rebellion was all of four years after the sucessful end of the War of Independence, and was limited to Massachusetts; at the same time, Washington was president, and the Constitutional Convention had already been called...

The Newburgh Affair was over in 1783.

Pretty thin reeds for a counter-revolution, when the men who had won the first one were well aware of the need for reform, the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and were both in command and working toward reform...

Almost all the Western Hemisphere republics passed through a period of internal instability after independence, ranging from border conflicts to separation vs. union to intraclass struggle...the US, however, didn't really face those, and the question worth asking is why.

In comparison to some of the other newly-independent Western Hemisphere republics, the US had the tremendous advantages of:

• a lengthy history and practice of local self government, and
• a lack of (essentially) unresolved issues from the revolution, and
• an open and (essentially) exploitable frontier, and
• a much greater potential for economic growth, and
• a (generally) better geographic, political, and cultural position in relationship to European investment and immigration.

For the USians to foul up all those advantages prior to the period of national consolidation, one would need a much deeper social crisis (or crises), a standing army/miltary caste, a sectional crisis (or two), and so on...

And none of those are really apparent in the early United States.

That's not exceptionalism, it is simply recognition that the US did not face the potential causes of conflict that (for example) the Latin American republics did after independence, which - chronologically - can be summed up as:

• race/caste;
• unrealized independence, especially in a period of global war;
• separation vs. union;
• boundary disputes;
• interstate territorial conquest;
• intrastate militarized political conflict;
• resource conflict;
• intraclass conflict;
• exterior intervention, on political/strategic and economic grounds;
• religious conflict;

The US had tremendous advantages in the immediate post-independence years, some of which were well understood and others were not; there were many elements of the preceding centuries of European settlement of what became the US that left deep fault lines that would produce conflict (slavery being the most obvious), but the reality of the late Eighteenth Century was that the US had a lot more breathing space after independence than much of Spanish or Portuguese "America" did in the middle of the Revolutionary/Napoleonic era in the early Nineteenth Century...

There was a reason men like Washington kept cautioning about becoming entangled in great power politics, after all...

Best,

TFSmith121 said:

Shays' Rebellion was all of four years after the sucessful end of the War of Independence, and was limited to Massachusetts; at the same time, Washington was president, and the Constitutional Convention had already been called...

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Shay's rebellion started in the summer of 1786. Washington was not President at the time but was in retirement at Mount Vernon. And the Constitutional Convention had not been called yet, since that came out of the Annapolis Convention, which was not held until two weeks after the outbreak of Shay's Rebellion.

Shays' Rebellion took place in 1786 and was able to last a long time due to the federal government's incompetence at that time. While at first the goal of it was state government reform, it later tried to overthrow the state government.

he Newsburgh Conspiracy happened three years later, and failed because the Moroni in charge mailed anonymous letters to Washington to try to get him to join. That's a three year difference. If we butterfly away the letters and have the veterans seize the opportunity of a later Shays' Rebellion, then I believe that things can get messy, especially considering how long IOTL it took them to quell a farmers' rebellion because now we have trained soldier ls in the fray. Add British aid to it (in hopes of destabilizing the country) and I think it's plausible.

Now if other groups were to join, like disenfranchised Loyalists, then I think it's chances increase.

Tyrion Washington said:

he Newsburgh Conspiracy happened three years later, and failed because the Moroni in charge mailed anonymous letters to Washington to try to get him to join. That's a three year difference. If we butterfly away the letters and have the veterans seize the opportunity of a later Shays' Rebellion, then I believe that things can get messy, especially considering how long IOTL it took them to quell a farmers' rebellion because now we have trained soldier ls in the fray. Add British aid to it (in hopes of destabilizing the country) and I think it's plausible.

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The Newburgh Conspiracy was only a threat because the Continental Army was still in the field. If you're talking about three years later, all the soldiers will have gone home.

No, you are correct; trying to do too much from memory;

Anaxagoras said:

Shay's rebellion started in the summer of 1786. Washington was not President at the time but was in retirement at Mount Vernon. And the Constitutional Convention had not been called yet, since that came out of the Annapolis Convention, which was not held until two weeks after the outbreak of Shay's Rebellion.

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No, you are correct; trying to do too much from memory; however, the reality is the US had a ready made "national" leadership class, from Washington on down, who if Lincoln and the Massachusetts militia could not prevail against the likes of Shays, certainly could have...

Again, the US elite (for lack of a better term) were committed to a nation state and had recognized the need for change; hard to see a counter-revolution (2nd revolution?) moving ahead in light of that.

Newburgh was a revolutionary war phenomenon, which was three years in the past at the time of Shay's movement.

Best,

Tyrion Washington said:

Shays' Rebellion took place in 1786 and was able to last a long time due to the federal government's incompetence at that time. While at first the goal of it was state government reform, it later tried to overthrow the state government.

he Newsburgh Conspiracy happened three years later, and failed because the Moroni in charge mailed anonymous letters to Washington to try to get him to join. That's a three year difference. If we butterfly away the letters and have the veterans seize the opportunity of a later Shays' Rebellion, then I believe that things can get messy, especially considering how long IOTL it took them to quell a farmers' rebellion because now we have trained soldier ls in the fray.

Click to expand...

The Newburgh conspiracy happened three years earlier, not three years later. The conspiracy was in '83, Shays' Rebellion in '86. If you want the two to coincide, you'd need an earlier Shays' Rebellion-analogue.

Since both boiled down to disgruntled veterans taking action against both real and perceived injustices against them, that's not entirely impossible.

Tyrion Washington said:

Add British aid to it (in hopes of destabilizing the country) and I think it's plausible.

Now if other groups were to join, like disenfranchised Loyalists, then I think it's chances increase.

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This idea of the British and/or loyalists getting involved is extremely unlikely, though. If it were to happen, the veterans would change their tone at once. They wouldn't want to be associated with the British cause at all.

I'm sorry for the mistake. Shay's Rebellion takes place earlier, not vice versa. How are the chances of this succeeding now? And could possibly French aid arrive?

Edit: And I do realize how unlikely it was for a revolution to occur anytime else. I just think that a very small window presents itself between two uprisings and a slow-moving government.

Gallatinism?

Simreeve said:

Gallatinism?

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Even as a guy who loves both 1) confederacies as a political system, and 2) as much personal freedom as possible... I really hate that book. Talk about wanking your personal hobby horse right into the stratosphere...

Seriously, though, the Whiskey Rebellion is another possible POD.

Suppose Wahington ultimately declined to come out of retirement, and another Federalist-leaning politician (Adams? Pinckney? Jay?) becomes the first president. Influenced by Hamilton to an unhealthy degree, higher and more numerous duties, tarriffs & the such are implemented. Result: a larger-scale and more popular insurrection. The administrations response to that: the OTL Adams-Hamilton way of dealing with dissent, in the form of repressive legislation (think Alien and Sedition Acts) and military force.

One might imagine that an army would be raised to deal with the problem as IOTL, but Washington might not lead it. If tensions are high enough, and the insurrectionists do not disperse as IOTL, a clash will be bloody. The idea of american armed forces butchering American citizens could realistically make the rebels martyrs, and turn the public against the administration.

Toppling the administration would not be likely, but there would be a lot of dissent. The rebels would make demands, and come 1792, you can bet someone will oppose the incumbent president as an anti-administration candidate who promises to implement the demanded reforms. (For instance, Jefferson might speed back from France to fill that role. He'd be happy to: it'd give him an excuse to defend the disgruntled masses and the settlers in the west. Could just as well be someone else, though.)

This does not lead to a radical re-organization of the system, however. Just different politics in the USA's formative years, and probably some laws curbing the power of the Federal government, granting more representation (voting rights?) to the common man, and probably severely limiting the size of any standing army.

L. Neil Smith would probably approve, although it would be far from his own ridiculously utopian ideas.