It's eerie just how similar Shays' Rebellion and the American Revolution were

MAlexMatt

Banned
A large body of people, many of whom were denied the right to vote, were being taxed by a distant government that mostly acted in the interests of a wealthy merchant elite who dominated that government. In response, angry New England farmers armed themselves, shut down the courts that were trying to steal their land and imprison them and their neighbors for being unable to pay tax debts, and marched to war.

Quick, am I talking about 1776 or 1786?

In truth, I could be talking about either. The similarities are downright scary. In 1776, the British government had been attempting to tax Americans for quite a while to pay down the national debt incurred fighting the Seven Years War. However, British colonial policy had been designed around ensuring money couldn't stay in America, being continually shipped out to fund an artificially constructed trade deficit with Great Britain. As a result, very few Americans had the cash to actually pay taxes raised on them.

In the 1780's, the government of Massachusetts was trying to tax Western Bay Staters in order to pay down debts acquired to fund the Revolution. However, many of these men were people who had been away for years and years actually fighting in the Revolution, and they either hadn't been paid period or they were paid in practically worthless state paper money or bonds. What few dollars or bonds they had they were forced to immediately sell or starve. Since they were selling so desperately, they sold them at a steep discount, sometimes as low as a few cents on the dollar. The wealthy speculators they were selling them to then turned around and used their control of the state legislature to raise taxes on these poor ex-soldiers in order to redeem the bonds and make good on the paper money. Since these people were broke, the courts instead started taking their property.

And it doesn't even really stop there. Besides the problem of taxation without representation that was common to both revolts, there was also a problem of demands for more local governments. In this time period about half of the population of Massachusetts actually lived in western Massachusetts, as much as a week's ride from the coast. The state government was, as it is now, located in Boston. One of the major (although mostly un-remembered) events of the 1780's was a convention in Hatfield that listed as one of its conditions to petition the state government with was to move the capital somewhere into the middle of the state closer to the majority of the population.

Similarly, one of the big issues during the Revolution was the opinion shared by many Americans, even loyalists, that they didn't want to be ruled by a parliament in London. Some of the more conservative compromises proposed before the Declaration of Independence involved the creation of an American Parliament.

The real freaky thing, though?

Many of the men closing courts and resisting state authority in the 1780's were the very same exact men who had done so a decade before against the British.

What is the real main difference in 1786 from 1776?

The difference is the People eventually lost in 1786.

I have no specific TL attached to this or even planned for it, but it's just amazing and a bit saddening to think, sometimes, what might have been.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Personally I am quite glad that Robespierre didn't get a nice example a few years beforehand.

Considering that the worst thing Massachusetts men did to Loyalists during the Revolution was drive them out of the state, I doubt there would have been a Terror under any hypothetically successful Western Massachusetts revolt against Bostonian rule.

EDIT: In fact, probably the most likely outcome would simply have been a new state centered around the upper Connecticut River valley. The Hatfield Convention had all the markings of becoming a disobedience regime similar to those that eventually toppled the colonial state governments in the initial stages of the American Revolution.
 
Thomas Jefferson responding to Shay's Rebellion saw it as a good thing saying: "The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of Patriots and Tyrants. It is its natural manure!"

How is that for a political statement!
 
Considering that the worst thing Massachusetts men did to Loyalists during the Revolution was drive them out of the state, I doubt there would have been a Terror under any hypothetically successful Western Massachusetts revolt against Bostonian rule.

EDIT: In fact, probably the most likely outcome would simply have been a new state centered around the upper Connecticut River valley. The Hatfield Convention had all the markings of becoming a disobedience regime similar to those that eventually toppled the colonial state governments in the initial stages of the American Revolution.
If you're interested in a successful Hartford Convetion, may I recommend Decades of Darkness? Warning: It's not a happy tale (in the Americas at least).
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
If you're interested in a successful Hartford Convetion, may I recommend Decades of Darkness? Warning: It's not a happy tale (in the Americas at least).

Not the Hartford Convention from a few decades in the future, but the Hatfield Convention that was part of the protest movement against the state of Massachusetts in 1782.
 
MalexMatt said:
A large body of people, many of whom were denied the right to vote, were being taxed by a distant government that mostly acted in the interests of a wealthy merchant elite who dominated that government. In response, angry New England farmers armed themselves, shut down the courts that were trying to steal their land and imprison them and their neighbors for being unable to pay tax debts, and marched to war.

Quick, am I talking about 1776 or 1786?

Definitely not 1776. That isn't even remotely like 1776.

Was Shays' Rebellion entirely wrong? No.

Was it being taxed without representation, or merely being taxed against their wishes? Sounds more like the latter. The state had debts to pay too. How dare it want to deal with that by taxing the people.

I cannot and do not consider jailing people for tax debts (in a day and age of debtor's prisons) to be unjust, however. The injustice of being ripped off by speculators is not something the government is responsible for (in the sense of it being the government screwing over the farmers).

Local government...a week's ride away is hardly the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

I'm not saying wanting the capital in a more central location is unreasonable, but this is not grounds for violence.

So I can't say I feel much inclination to support this, though more than the American Revolution, which was more a result of smugglers who hated taxes than farmers who couldn't pay taxes.

That, however, is rather like saying I'd rather live under Krushchev than Mao.

On a positive note, good thread idea...possibly the wrong forum, but good idea.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Definitely not 1776. That isn't even remotely like 1776.

Was Shays' Rebellion entirely wrong? No.

Was it being taxed without representation, or merely being taxed against their wishes? Sounds more like the latter. The state had debts to pay too. How dare it want to deal with that by taxing the people.

I cannot and do not consider jailing people for tax debts (in a day and age of debtor's prisons) to be unjust, however. The injustice of being ripped off by speculators is not something the government is responsible for (in the sense of it being the government screwing over the farmers).

Local government...a week's ride away is hardly the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

I'm not saying wanting the capital in a more central location is unreasonable, but this is not grounds for violence.

So I can't say I feel much inclination to support this, though more than the American Revolution, which was more a result of smugglers who hated taxes than farmers who couldn't pay taxes.

That, however, is rather like saying I'd rather live under Krushchev than Mao.

On a positive note, good thread idea...possibly the wrong forum, but good idea.

States have debts, too, but it shouldn't try to retire those debts so quickly that it ruins the lives of thousands of its citizens.

Truth is, the Boston speculator class was using the very distance people were complaining about (and the fact that many of these people couldn't vote on account of property requirements) to control the state government and raise taxes enough to retire the internal state debt by the end of the 1780's.

Recent study on the geographical sources of regulator groups shows that an inordinate number of them came from the Western Counties, while counties closer to Boston produced much smaller numbers of regulators. It's blatantly obvious from this data that Shays' Rebellion was a revolt by Western Massachusetts against arbitrary rule from Eastern Massachusetts. There's even a metaphor for the early American petitions to the British crown for relief in the form of a series of conventions and petitions from Western Bay Stater towns to stop doing what the Bostonian elite was doing.

This review of the book in question lists a lot of the more salient data.
 
States have debts, too, but it shouldn't try to retire those debts so quickly that it ruins the lives of thousands of its citizens.

Truth is, the Boston speculator class was using the very distance people were complaining about (and the fact that many of these people couldn't vote on account of property requirements) to control the state government and raise taxes enough to retire the internal state debt by the end of the 1780's.

I agree on the first part, but I think this is more a consequence of a mistake (no one was trying to ruin the farmers, it was just a bad situation) than the kind of governmental decision that justifies more than outrage at the government not being as aware of the consequences of its actions as it should be - in other words, this is grounds for pointing out that the government messed up, not overthrowing anything.

And the Boston speculator class is a problem within the state, not of the state.

One should also ask what the consequences for the state (meaning its inhabitants, not the government specifically) would be if those debts weren't retired.

Recent study on the geographical sources of regulator groups shows that an inordinate number of them came from the Western Counties, while counties closer to Boston produced much smaller numbers of regulators. It's blatantly obvious from this data that Shays' Rebellion was a revolt by Western Massachusetts against arbitrary rule from Eastern Massachusetts. There's even a metaphor for the early American petitions to the British crown for relief in the form of a series of conventions and petitions from Western Bay Stater towns to stop doing what the Bostonian elite was doing.

This review of the book in question lists a lot of the more salient data.

Its blatantly obvious that the victims of the speculators were in the mostly in the western part of the state, not that anyone was guilty of arbitrary rule or victimized by it and certainly not that the Eastern part of Massachusetts was ganging up on the Western part in some kind of regional hostility thing.

And both sending petitions...um...not sure how this makes the two particularly similar.

Is this a bad situation? Yes. Is this something I feel morally outraged about? Only in the sense I'm hostile to capitalism.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
I agree on the first part, but I think this is more a consequence of a mistake (no one was trying to ruin the farmers, it was just a bad situation) than the kind of governmental decision that justifies more than outrage at the government not being as aware of the consequences of its actions as it should be - in other words, this is grounds for pointing out that the government messed up, not overthrowing anything.

It was a bad situation. The American Revolution essentially ruined the American economy. It's just, the merchant and financier classes expected their lives to go right back on track and were willing to use their control of the state (and, later on, Federal) governments to make sure that happened.

And Western Bay Staters had been pointing out that the government was messed up...for years. And for years they sat by and watched their family, friends, and neighbors be pushed around by the courts until they said enough was enough and stood up for themselves.

When petitions stop being enough you eventually have to defend yourself. These people learned that in the initial Revolution and they were prepared to do so again.

And the Boston speculator class is a problem within the state, not of the state.

Thing is, they were the state. Property requirements to vote were high enough that they made up the majority of the electorate and were easily able to outvote any body else. With the seat of government in Boston, they were also able to easily control the course of politics to their own benefit.

Plus, how far are you willing to carry this line of thought? Were the Indians justified in rebelling against the British Empire? After all, the various abuses of the Raj problems within the state, rather than problems with the existence of a state itself.

One should also ask what the consequences for the state (meaning its inhabitants, not the government specifically) would be if those debts weren't retired.

Nobody was talking about forcing a default. However, paying down the debt over a longer course of time, especially when the economy was in the process of a turn around and went into full on growth mode by the mid-1790's.

Its blatantly obvious that the victims of the speculators were in the mostly in the western part of the state, not that anyone was guilty of arbitrary rule or victimized by it and certainly not that the Eastern part of Massachusetts was ganging up on the Western part in some kind of regional hostility thing.

What was happening was the wealthier, commercial east of the state was using its control of the government to take advantage of the poorer, agrarian west of the state. Simple as. It wasn't regional hostility, necessarily, but region did have something to do with it.

And both sending petitions...um...not sure how this makes the two particularly similar.

It's yet another instance where the two had common occurrences.

Is this a bad situation? Yes. Is this something I feel morally outraged about? Only in the sense I'm hostile to capitalism.

Which is funny, because you seem awfully eager to defend the institutional basis of the capitalist system.
 
It was a bad situation. The American Revolution essentially ruined the American economy. It's just, the merchant and financier classes expected their lives to go right back on track and were willing to use their control of the state (and, later on, Federal) governments to make sure that happened.

And Western Bay Staters had been pointing out that the government was messed up...for years. And for years they sat by and watched their family, friends, and neighbors be pushed around by the courts until they said enough was enough and stood up for themselves.

When petitions stop being enough you eventually have to defend yourself. These people learned that in the initial Revolution and they were prepared to do so again.

And you don't have the right to expect people like me to say that what you're doing is unquestionably legitimate. That I don't think so shouldn't mean very much to the farmers, but since I'm having a discussion with a fellow student of history, not a farmer, I'm standing on my attitude more firmly than I might if I was around in 1786.

Again: How dare the courts try to apply the consequences for not paying taxes. Taxation is not tyrannical.

I have more sympathy for the farmers being squeezed than I do for the American Revolution, which I feel fairly solidly behind the British government up to the point of failing to deal with the protests appropriately (separate kind of government fail from the issue of tyranny, which I'll get into if you want), but I don't feel particularly sympathetic to it in some idealistic or ideological terms - just in terms of the government not taking care of business effectively.

Also, of course: For years? When has this started again? '86 is only three years after the Revolution ended...not very long to start plans to deal with war debt and have "years" worth of protesting (in a nonliteral minded way).

Thing is, they were the state. Property requirements to vote were high enough that they made up the majority of the electorate and were easily able to outvote any body else. With the seat of government in Boston, they were also able to easily control the course of politics to their own benefit.

Plus, how far are you willing to carry this line of thought? Were the Indians justified in rebelling against the British Empire? After all, the various abuses of the Raj problems within the state, rather than problems with the existence of a state itself.
The extent to which I'm willing to carry this line of thought is, briefly, that you had better be able to tell me that the system is incapable of reform. I will support anything up to and including civil disobedience with pleasure for lesser things, I will not support rebellion except with great reservations no matter how corrupt the individuals IN government or influencing those in it are.

For instance, take slave revolts. Slavery is inherently based on tyranny and can be nothing else. Monarchy vs. republicanism...isn't like that. Individual cases might be, but the nature of monarchy is not more inherently unjust than the nature of republics.

I'd probably be less opposed to this if it wasn't for the fact starting by comparing it to the AR just reminds me of why I'm a loyalist (a combination of a lack of legitimate colonial grievances and my prejudices towards government).

Nobody was talking about forcing a default. However, paying down the debt over a longer course of time, especially when the economy was in the process of a turn around and went into full on growth mode by the mid-1790's.
This feels like an incomplete thought.

And I'm not saying anyone is out to force a default, but the government does have a reason to want things paid off quickly if possible without undue injury (what counts as undue being the line that by implication is being crossed).

I say by implication because your argument does not indicate whether or not the rich weren't paying, though its implied that the farmers bore most of the burden with the least ability to support it. Which is indeed unjust.

What was happening was the wealthier, commercial east of the state was using its control of the government to take advantage of the poorer, agrarian west of the state. Simple as. It wasn't regional hostility, necessarily, but region did have something to do with it.
No, wealth had something to do with it. The wealthy wanted to put the burden on the poor. This has been happening since sometime after Cain murdered Abel.

Region had something to do with it only by chance.

It's yet another instance where the two had common occurrences.
That's sort of like saying that because they both involved hostility to kings that the Russian Revolution and the Baron's Revolt were similar. To pick an extreme example to indicate why I'm disagreeing.

Which is funny, because you seem awfully eager to defend the institutional basis of the capitalist system.
No. I am eager to defend the institutional basis of lawful government as the rightful captain (word chosen intentionally) of the people.

Mutiny is too serious an upset to the order of things to not be to be assumed fault-worthy until proven otherwise.

Again, word chosen intentionally - will explain if the issue of my philosophy of government needs to be defined better.

Dr. Stephen Maturin: You see I'm rather understanding of mutinies. Men pressed from their homes, confined for months aboard a wooden prison...
Capt. Jack Aubrey: I respect your right to disagree with me, but I can only afford one rebel on this ship. I hate it when you talk of the service in this way. It makes me feel so very low. You think I want to flog Nagle? A man who hacked the ropes that sent his mate to his death? Under MY orders? Do you not see? The only things that keep this wooden world together are hard work...
Dr. Stephen Maturin: Jack, the man failed to salute. There's hierarchies even in nature. There is no disdain in nature. There is no...
Capt. Jack Aubrey: Men must be governed! Often not wisely, but governed nonetheless.
Dr. Stephen Maturin: That's the excuse of every tyrant in history, from Nero to Bonaparte. I, for one, am opposed to authority. It is an egg of misery and oppression.
Capt. Jack Aubrey: You've come to the wrong shop for anarchy, brother.

Aubrey isn't ideal. But a world where his sort are tyrants is a world where law has no meaning.
 
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MAlexMatt

Banned

So essentially what you're arguing is that the state is analogous to the military and citizenship within it is analogous to enlistment. The set of moral duties that apply to a soldier or sailor in war time is similar or identical to the set of moral duties that apply to citizens in peacetime.

How Hobbesian of you. Do you happen to be against capitalism because you vastly prefer fascism?
 
So essentially what you're arguing is that the state is analogous to the military and citizenship within it is analogous to enlistment. The set of moral duties that apply to a soldier or sailor in war time is similar or identical to the set of moral duties that apply to citizens in peacetime.

How Hobbesian of you. Do you happen to be against capitalism because you vastly prefer fascism?

The social contract is a mutual agreement of the people to support the government and the government to support the people. - Me.


The very short version of why I chose the word "captain" is that order is necessary for things to work for the good of the ship (or the state) for much the same reasons - using the "state" to refer to the whole of the same. This isn't less true of democratic societies, if anything good democracies need more contributed by the people. In another system, the people (in overly simplistic terms) merely owe labor as their contribution. In a government of and by the people, the people need to be able to govern.

I don't support fascism, but capitalism and anarchism are almost as good at leading to bad ends (as fascism).

My ideal form of government would be an Enlightened autocracy. My preferred government in the real world form is an constitutional monarchy, if asked.

That's why I'm using the metaphor of "captain". This isn't about wartime and such issues. Its just a matter of how the captain (the government) needs to be able to rely on the obedience of the crew (the people) to handle the vessel (the country).

But the reason for the Mutiny issue is the foundation of my social theory (italicized above). There are times and places mutiny is justifiable, when the captain's behavior is threatening the ship. The captain being a dink is not sufficient. Grounds for protest? Sure. Using dink in the second sense http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dink

I may be a monarchist, but I believe in civil disobedience as defined by Martin Luther King as an unalienable moral right.

If that comes off as contradictory, we have a long discussion ahead of us, and I would suggest taking it to PMs so that we can discuss the justness of the grievances of the farmers in Shays' Rebellion.

Both more interesting and less likely to be open for misinterpretation.

And on that note, I'd like to see - if you don't mind showing it - how you read my post as pro-fascist. Was it picking a naval vessel as an example of "a ship"?

Searching to better understand what you're saying and how what I said came off that way.
 
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MAlexMatt

Banned
It's funny you should bring up the social contract, because that was exactly the basis for the American Revolution and, later, the rebellion in Massachusetts. In both cases the people revolting believed that the people in charge of the state were failing to uphold their end of the deal, taking advantage of the right of the sovereign to do things 'normal' people couldn't, without fulfilling the duty of the sovereign to serve the common good.

And, in both cases, it was true. The American Revolution occurred because the American colonies were colonies in the fullest sense of the term: They were, by statute, economically subordinated to the mother country. Americans were not able to enjoy the same level of economic freedom as British subjects in Britain by law. In return for accepting this status they were left mostly un-taxed and otherwise un-regulated by the British government.

However, as time went on, the British government began to break this social contract by trying to tax Americans without first lifting the economic limitations that favored Britain over America. Americans petitioned and resisted non-violently for over a decade before the British began using violence by forcing closed the Port of Boston, revoking Bay Stater democratic self-rule, removing their right to jury trial, and forcing Bostonians to take British soldiers into their homes (that is, forcing military occupation on them).

Had these things been done to a British city in Britain, you can be sure that there would have been hell to pay for the government in London. In fact, it's exactly because of this, and because of the fact that British cities had parliamentary representation, that such things would never have been done to a British city in Britain. The Coercive Acts were, essentially, the British Parliament saying that American colonists were second class citizens in the British Empire, below in terms of rights British subjects in Britain. That is what turned non-violent civil disobedience into open rebellion and, eventually, revolution. That is why the American Revolution was not only justified, but necessary to maintaining a free society in America. That is why I called you a fascist, because advocating against the American Revolution is essentially advocating for rule by a militarized central state over rule by a democratic civilian populace.

The same kind of thing happened ten years later in the 1780's. The government of the State of Massachusetts was entrusted with upholding the law and using its rights as the sovereign in Bay Stater civil society to pursue the common good. However, the plutocrat dominated government in Boston began to, instead, pursue the particular goods of a specific group within that civil society, to the detriment of other groups. western Bay Staters went through the very same process of non-violent civil disobedience by organizing protest meetings and creating petitions to the government for redress of grievances. They were ignored and the abuses continued.

These being the same exact people who had dealt with this problem a decade prior from a different government, they had a lot less patience for it than before. They eventually organized and moved to defend themselves. Except, this time, they were beaten. As the years went by the government in Boston did make concessions, but this was only after Shays' Rebellion almost overthrew it. Without that threat of violence against the political class those concessions would never have been made.

I make the argument that things would have been better had Shays' Rebellion succeeded because, although the explicit and easy to notice abuses ended, the political class continued to work to centralize power and wealth in their own hands, first using the powers of state to monopolize the banking business (something the agrarian West wouldn't have resisted because none of them understood what was being done to them) in their own hands, then using the powers of the state to oppress and control the new class of landless urban laborers that began to grow as a result of past abuses (where do you think farmers deprived of their lands due to the old borrow and tax scheme went?).

Had Shays' Rebellion succeeded, and truly local democratic self-rule been attained, I don't think these future abuses would have happened. Those members of the financier and merchant classes who weren't interested in serving the common good would have been chased out of the state to New York and Philadelphia decades earlier than IOTL and Bay Staters would have been free to rule themselves as a democratic, instead of plutocratic, republic.
 
It's funny you should bring up the social contract, because that was exactly the basis for the American Revolution and, later, the rebellion in Massachusetts. In both cases the people revolting believed that the people in charge of the state were failing to uphold their end of the deal, taking advantage of the right of the sovereign to do things 'normal' people couldn't, without fulfilling the duty of the sovereign to serve the common good.
...
Had these things been done to a British city in Britain, you can be sure that there would have been hell to pay for the government in London. In fact, it's exactly because of this, and because of the fact that British cities had parliamentary representation, that such things would never have been done to a British city in Britain. The Coercive Acts were, essentially, the British Parliament saying that American colonists were second class citizens in the British Empire, below in terms of rights British subjects in Britain. That is what turned non-violent civil disobedience into open rebellion and, eventually, revolution. That is why the American Revolution was not only justified, but necessary to maintaining a free society in America. That is why I called you a fascist, because advocating against the American Revolution is essentially advocating for rule by a militarized central state over rule by a democratic civilian populace.

No, advocating against the American Revolution is advocating for rule by the legitimate government's right to collect taxes and enforce its authority. The colonists refused to uphold their end of the deal and got treated accordingly until it went to the point of war. They were not being treated more unjustly with any of the various "intolerable" taxes than Britons with Britain - they paid less than Britons within Britain.

This is not to say that the British government did everything justly or rightly, but it was not violating the social contract by expecting the colonists to start actually paying taxes and custom dues that had been in place for a long time.

If you genuinely believe that the British government was a "militarized central state" in the 1760s and 1770s, I'm going to offer you the last word and drop out of this thread, because I can't even begin to follow that train of thought and it would be inconsiderate to spend the amount of your time it would take to make it clear.

Central state, yes. Fascist-like militarized state? No. Not even close.

The same kind of thing happened ten years later in the 1780's. The government of the State of Massachusetts was entrusted with upholding the law and using its rights as the sovereign in Bay Stater civil society to pursue the common good. However, the plutocrat dominated government in Boston began to, instead, pursue the particular goods of a specific group within that civil society, to the detriment of other groups. western Bay Staters went through the very same process of non-violent civil disobedience by organizing protest meetings and creating petitions to the government for redress of grievances. They were ignored and the abuses continued.
Did the government pursue "particular goods of a particular social group" by expecting the farmers (presumably not uniquely) to pay taxes as part of paying off the debt?
 
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MAlexMatt

Banned
You know Elfwine, on my more honest days I kind of agree: Constitutional monarchy of some kind or another might really be one of the best forms of government Man has ever invented. That, or a Constitutional Republic. Either or, what really matters is the constitution.

But one of the key factors for making constitutional government work is keeping the government under the law. Now, whether it be 'His Majesty's Government' or 'The People's Government', what matters is making sure that, when that government steps out of line, the governed are there to make sure it steps right back.

Imagine, for a moment, if the Scottish were forbidden from trading with ANYONE but the English. Also, the Scottish government was forbidden from printing any new money at all, instead being forced to use money gained from trade with the English. Would you think the Scots justified in rising up against the English?

Those were just a few of the chains lain on Americans to keep them in subservient, colonial status. And the Americans had the added problem of a 3000 mile journey being far more expensive and risky than the few hundred mile journey from Scotland to London. Americans were forbidden from trading with their natural trading partners in the Caribbean, they were kept very artificially cash poor by British bans on their colonial governments providing a currency, and a small host of other regulations and limitations that were explicitly designed to enrich the metropole (Great Britain) at the expense of the periphery (America).

The ONE solace Americans had, the ONE thing they had going for their lives in the New World, was that they didn't have to pay taxes on the material wealth they had managed to accumulate over the century and a half they'd spent in America.

And the British wanted to take that away from them. They wanted to use America as a dumping ground for East Indian Tea, another abuse meant to enrich metropolitan merchants at the expense of American consumers. They wanted to stop the small flow of smuggling that was all that kept the American merchant community going (American merchants were literally forbidden to trade with anyone else by Great Britain, so they had to compete with the already large, well-funded, well-equipped British merchant fleet) by shifting smuggling charges from common law courts (where a sympathetic community could exonerate smugglers just trying to make a living by trading with the Spanish and French in the Caribbean, Louisiana, and South America) in smuggler's hometowns to admiralty courts (where there wasn't even a jury period! Talk about the Rights of Englishmen! Habeus Corpus is about as fundamental as it gets in English legal thought) in Halifax or London. They wanted to close off the West from settlement by future generations of Americans, not only by protecting Native Americans in the region, but by outright giving a great deal of Trans-Appalachian land to French-speaking Quebecois the entire Old Northwest. They wanted to disarm America militiamen who had depended on their weapons for generations to defend themselves from raids by Natives.

The British abused and berated the American colonists at every turn. They made it fundamentally clear that Americans were second-class subjects not entitled to the basic rights that every Englishman in England enjoyed and had been guaranteed for centuries, rights upheld and re-affirmed again and again, most recently. Parliament insisted on passing taxes no American assembly voted for. The Intolerable Acts did to Boston a list of things that Parliament would never have been able to get away with doing to an English city.

The Americans protested and petitioned, even as the King and Parliament continued to break the most basic aspects of the social contract that bound the Empire together, until finally someone had enough on the Lexington Green and something snapped in the collective mind of Massachusetts.

To the Americans, all this proved that a distant, un-responsible government was incapable of preserving the rights and liberties they considered the foundational birthright of Englishmen, and later People, everywhere.

So, when the very same men who reacted against British abuses saw the same kinds of things being done by their state government ten years later, they reacted again, in the same kinds of ways. They petitioned quietly and peacefully for years, begging for redress of their grievances. The distant government in Boston ignored their pleas until, finally, they had had enough and they tried to repeat the actions they took against British abuse a decade beforehand.

But this time they lost, and Americans have been subject to an often abusive plutocracy ever since, our only solace, for a short time, the open frontier in the West and the increasing franchise of the 19th century. But the elites of those early generations knew exactly the leveling effect those two factors would have, and they planned for both, corrupting each state government one by one and aiming straight at the heart of the new republic with blow after blow: First the Constitution centralized power so that they could more effectively combat the democratic influences of the increasingly radical, increasingly widely enfranchised state assemblies; then they attempted to enshrine their program of state finance and state subsidies for their industrial and banking projects in the heart of this new national government.

Truth be told, the end of Shays' Rebellion wasn't the end of the war for true democracy in America, but it was the end of the first battle, and it was a battle the democrats lost. And they've been fighting a desperate rear-guard action ever since. Sure, occasionally they win a resounding victory (the respective ends of the First and Second Banks, the end of slavery in the Civil War, a myriad of smaller wins), but the plutocrats always manage to push them back two steps for every one forward.

What's eerie, and sad, about Shays' Rebellion and the confrontation at Springfield Armory, is that all could have changed.

You know, I researched a PoD when I was thinking of doing a timeline on the subject once. It's very rare that history actually comes down to the decisions and emotions of one man, but this is one such example.

On the road to Springfield, Shays led a column of men. He ran across an old war buddy along the road and got to talking with him. Ends up the old friend had been hired by some of the Bostonian merchants to command a small number of men in the impromptu private militia they had put together to defend the Armory. Shays appealed to this friend in every way he knew how: Family, friendship, faith. It must have been hard for him, but the friend could only fall back on the one thing Shays couldn't offer: Money.

Truly a sign of the times we live in. Truly, sadly.

It's just amazing to think that, had this man had one, real pang of conscience, how different the world would be. He was stationed on one end of the militia line during the actual battle in front of the Armory. Had he changed his mind, he could have turned the small line of men he commanded into the rest at a crucial moment in the battle, rolling up the militia's flank just as Shays' men were in mid-charge. The rippling line of fire that turned so many of the Regulators back would have faltered, the Regulators would have again been heartened, the militia would have broken and either retreated or surrendered. Springfield Armory would have been taken.

The merchants would never have been able to compete with the Regulators then. The only reason they won IOTL was because their private militias were well equipped with firearm and most of Shays' men were using clubs, knifes, and other make-shift weaponry. Properly equipped, not just with guns but with cannons and real uniforms, the Regulator movement would have been unstoppable by any force Massachusetts could muster (the regular militia refused to fight for the government in Boston against their brothers in the West). The government in Boston would have been forced to come to the negotiating table. Wider suffrage would have been guaranteed, farmers might even have gotten allodial title to their lands. They would have at least had more direct control over the level of taxation they were compelled to shoulder.

Most importantly, the corruption of the state government that the plutocratic elite were able to enact during their time of privileged access to the same (while the franchise was severely curtailed by property requirements, that is) would never happen. The Constitution in the form we got IOTL is almost certainly butterflied -- once it's clear that the Regulator movement isn't an anarchic mob bent on destroying all wealth and property, the irrational fear many people felt that drove them into the arms of the Nationalists will subside. What limitations the Articles suffered from would be fixed piece-meal, and America would have grown up freer than any nation in history.
 
You know Elfwine, on my more honest days I kind of agree: Constitutional monarchy of some kind or another might really be one of the best forms of government Man has ever invented. That, or a Constitutional Republic. Either or, what really matters is the constitution.

But one of the key factors for making constitutional government work is keeping the government under the law. Now, whether it be 'His Majesty's Government' or 'The People's Government', what matters is making sure that, when that government steps out of line, the governed are there to make sure it steps right back.

Imagine, for a moment, if the Scottish were forbidden from trading with ANYONE but the English. Also, the Scottish government was forbidden from printing any new money at all, instead being forced to use money gained from trade with the English. Would you think the Scots justified in rising up against the English?

The first part? Not in armed rebellion, no. The second? Assuming Scotland is legally and legitimately controlled by England, no.

A rather relevant question: Did the British government break the agreements it had made, or did the American revolutionaries determine that the circumstances were inherently unfair? There's a big difference when it comes to the issue of "keeping the government under the law" - if the law is set up so that Parliament is the relevant body to be passing legislation for the Empire, then that applies in the colonies and at home.

Those were just a few of the chains lain on Americans to keep them in subservient, colonial status. And the Americans had the added problem of a 3000 mile journey being far more expensive and risky than the few hundred mile journey from Scotland to London. Americans were forbidden from trading with their natural trading partners in the Caribbean, they were kept very artificially cash poor by British bans on their colonial governments providing a currency, and a small host of other regulations and limitations that were explicitly designed to enrich the metropole (Great Britain) at the expense of the periphery (America).
Because not being able to print your own currency is the same thing as poverty.

As for "natural trading partners"...so, Britain isn't one of them, at all?

Incidentally, one might want to compare the taxes paid by Englishmen in England to the taxes the colonists were asked to pay as their share of the bills for their defense.

The ONE solace Americans had, the ONE thing they had going for their lives in the New World, was that they didn't have to pay taxes on the material wealth they had managed to accumulate over the century and a half they'd spent in America.
Where and when did the British grant the colonies immunity from taxation? Neglect of enforcement of custom duties and similar is not the same thing as granting freedom from said fees.

And the British wanted to take that away from them. They wanted to use America as a dumping ground for East Indian Tea, another abuse meant to enrich metropolitan merchants at the expense of American consumers. They wanted to stop the small flow of smuggling that was all that kept the American merchant community going (American merchants were literally forbidden to trade with anyone else by Great Britain, so they had to compete with the already large, well-funded, well-equipped British merchant fleet) by shifting smuggling charges from common law courts (where a sympathetic community could exonerate smugglers just trying to make a living by trading with the Spanish and French in the Caribbean, Louisiana, and South America) in smuggler's hometowns to admiralty courts (where there wasn't even a jury period! Talk about the Rights of Englishmen! Habeus Corpus is about as fundamental as it gets in English legal thought) in Halifax or London.
Habeus Corpus is not the right to a jury trial. And that smuggling being stopped...sorry, I'm not going to be sympathetic to people breaking the law for personal profit - not survival, profit. As for tea: They charged less for John Company tea than the tea that had been sold by smuggler-merchants. American consumers aren't suffering here, just American smugglers.

They wanted to close off the West from settlement by future generations of Americans, not only by protecting Native Americans in the region, but by outright giving a great deal of Trans-Appalachian land to French-speaking Quebecois the entire Old Northwest. They wanted to disarm America militiamen who had depended on their weapons for generations to defend themselves from raids by Natives.
The first two parts of this? I don't mind a bit. I really don't. There is absolutely nothing that entitles Americans to said land (though the way it was handled was extraordinarily inappropriate - saying that veterans would get land out west and then "Um, actually that just means regulars." was either insulting or clumsy. If it had been in place from the beginning I'd be okay with it).

The British abused and berated the American colonists at every turn. They made it fundamentally clear that Americans were second-class subjects not entitled to the basic rights that every Englishman in England enjoyed and had been guaranteed for centuries, rights upheld and re-affirmed again and again, most recently. Parliament insisted on passing taxes no American assembly voted for. The Intolerable Acts did to Boston a list of things that Parliament would never have been able to get away with doing to an English city.
Parliament, the national/imperial government? Fine by me. As for the Intolerable Acts...if an English city had behaved as Boston had, I wouldn't be very surprised to see something similar. And rightfully so.

The Americans protested and petitioned, even as the King and Parliament continued to break the most basic aspects of the social contract that bound the Empire together, until finally someone had enough on the Lexington Green and something snapped in the collective mind of Massachusetts.

To the Americans, all this proved that a distant, un-responsible government was incapable of preserving the rights and liberties they considered the foundational birthright of Englishmen, and later People, everywhere.
I support the right of petition. I do not support the colonists acting as if they should be allowed to get away scotfree with breaking the law and only pay taxes that they voted for and otherwise refusing to do anything to uphold their end of the social contract. They refused to pay their share of the expenses, and acted as if it was a right. I call foul. I call foul and triple foul on those like Samuel Adams who sought to keep tensions up and anger boiling instead of resolving the situation in an amicable way.

So, when the very same men who reacted against British abuses saw the same kinds of things being done by their state government ten years later, they reacted again, in the same kinds of ways. They petitioned quietly and peacefully for years, begging for redress of their grievances. The distant government in Boston ignored their pleas until, finally, they had had enough and they tried to repeat the actions they took against British abuse a decade beforehand.

But this time they lost, and Americans have been subject to an often abusive plutocracy ever since, our only solace, for a short time, the open frontier in the West and the increasing franchise of the 19th century. But the elites of those early generations knew exactly the leveling effect those two factors would have, and they planned for both, corrupting each state government one by one and aiming straight at the heart of the new republic with blow after blow: First the Constitution centralized power so that they could more effectively combat the democratic influences of the increasingly radical, increasingly widely enfranchised state assemblies; then they attempted to enshrine their program of state finance and state subsidies for their industrial and banking projects in the heart of this new national government.
:rolleyes: No comment.

Truth be told, the end of Shays' Rebellion wasn't the end of the war for true democracy in America, but it was the end of the first battle, and it was a battle the democrats lost. And they've been fighting a desperate rear-guard action ever since. Sure, occasionally they win a resounding victory (the respective ends of the First and Second Banks, the end of slavery in the Civil War, a myriad of smaller wins), but the plutocrats always manage to push them back two steps for every one forward.

What's eerie, and sad, about Shays' Rebellion and the confrontation at Springfield Armory, is that all could have changed.

You know, I researched a PoD when I was thinking of doing a timeline on the subject once. It's very rare that history actually comes down to the decisions and emotions of one man, but this is one such example.

On the road to Springfield, Shays led a column of men. He ran across an old war buddy along the road and got to talking with him. Ends up the old friend had been hired by some of the Bostonian merchants to command a small number of men in the impromptu private militia they had put together to defend the Armory. Shays appealed to this friend in every way he knew how: Family, friendship, faith. It must have been hard for him, but the friend could only fall back on the one thing Shays couldn't offer: Money.

Truly a sign of the times we live in. Truly, sadly.

It's just amazing to think that, had this man had one, real pang of conscience, how different the world would be. He was stationed on one end of the militia line during the actual battle in front of the Armory. Had he changed his mind, he could have turned the small line of men he commanded into the rest at a crucial moment in the battle, rolling up the militia's flank just as Shays' men were in mid-charge. The rippling line of fire that turned so many of the Regulators back would have faltered, the Regulators would have again been heartened, the militia would have broken and either retreated or surrendered. Springfield Armory would have been taken.

The merchants would never have been able to compete with the Regulators then. The only reason they won IOTL was because their private militias were well equipped with firearm and most of Shays' men were using clubs, knifes, and other make-shift weaponry. Properly equipped, not just with guns but with cannons and real uniforms, the Regulator movement would have been unstoppable by any force Massachusetts could muster (the regular militia refused to fight for the government in Boston against their brothers in the West). The government in Boston would have been forced to come to the negotiating table. Wider suffrage would have been guaranteed, farmers might even have gotten allodial title to their lands. They would have at least had more direct control over the level of taxation they were compelled to shoulder.

Most importantly, the corruption of the state government that the plutocratic elite were able to enact during their time of privileged access to the same (while the franchise was severely curtailed by property requirements, that is) would never happen. The Constitution in the form we got IOTL is almost certainly butterflied -- once it's clear that the Regulator movement isn't an anarchic mob bent on destroying all wealth and property, the irrational fear many people felt that drove them into the arms of the Nationalists will subside. What limitations the Articles suffered from would be fixed piece-meal, and America would have grown up freer than any nation in history.
America has done so. Because of, not despite, the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation were unworkable and beyond repair, to make things worse.

Your idea of how the government should be reigned in treats it as if the people's obligation to obey and serve (their end of the social contract) is optional, and can be withheld at will.

I couldn't disagree more when it comes to the 18th century, or the 19th.

Does that mean that neither the Regulators or the "Patriots" had legitimate grievances?

I'll put it this way: What were they doing to uphold their end of the bargain? What were they doing to hold up their end of the burden?

I cheerfully despise plutocrats and aristocrats alike, but I despise them for a reason that isn't about status and power and is about irresponsibility and neglect of obligations.

I have to ask. What do you consider the obligation of the people to the state in the case of the American colonists or the Massachusetts farmers? What do they owe in exchange for what you're saying they didn't get?
 
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