Causes Of Shay's Rebellion By Eric Foner

In Eric Foner, “Founding a Nation, 1783-1791,” Foner depicts the chain of events that occur that led to the formation of a stronger central government and the creation of the US Constitution in 1787. Shay’s Rebellion brought out the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, the predecessor to the US Constitution, which gave the federal government very limited powers when I came to raising funds to provide for the general defense of the states. Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government did not have the ability to raise funds through taxation to fund a national army, instead, it relied upon voluntary contributions from the states. Shay’s Rebellion came about when the state of Massachusetts in 1786 decided to raise taxes in order to pay its state debts, this caused many farmers,
This led to the discussion of constructing a stronger central government that could have the ability to provide stability to states during times of rebellion. The US Constitution was drafted after a great deal of compromises on the issues of states representation, direct election, and slavery. The final version created a central government that would have a bimodal legislature, with the senate having equal representation elected from state legislatures and the house having proportional representation elected directly from the people. On the issue of slavery, slaves for the purposes of state representation in the house were considered three-fifths of a white man and importation of new slaves would continue in America for a minimum of another 20 years. In order to give support for ratifying the new Constitution, the federalist, people that supported the new Constitution, promised and later pass a Bill of Rights that protected the rights of US citizens from government