NARRATOR
The American Revolution was not, as the orthodox histories would have it, the revolt of a unified people against England. The colonies were torn by class conflict—food riots and flour riots, and farmers’ rebellions—in the hundred years before the Revolution. During the Revolutionary War, conflict emerged again, when ordinary soldiers, angered by their humiliating treatment and the special privileges of the officers, mutinied against George Washington. He ordered that some of them be executed by their fellow mutineers. After the war, veterans who had been given small amounts of land found themselves so heavily taxed they could not meet their payments. In western Massachusetts, thousands of farmers surrounded the courthouses where their farms were being auctioned off and refused to allow the courts to proceed. Eventually Shays’ Rebellion, as it was called, was crushed, but it put a scare into the Founding Fathers, and when they met in 1787, shortly after, to create a Constitution, they made sure to set up a government strong enough to put down rebellion. These are the words of one of the participants in Shays’ Rebellion, a man named Plough Jogger.
PLOUGH JOGGER
I’ve labored hard all my days and fared hard. I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war; been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, Continental rates, and all rates…been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables and collectors, and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth.
I have been obliged to pay and nobody will pay me. I have lost a great deal by this man and that man and t’other man, and the great men are going to get all we have, and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors, nor lawyers, and I know that we are the biggest party, let them say what they will. We’ve come to relieve the distresses of the people. There will be no court until they have redress of their grievances.