The Articles of Confederation
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can merchants in her home ports and even closed the West Indies to Yankee traders.
Often the States suffered as much from the helplessness of the Confederate government as they did from the excesses and turmoil of their
own legislatures. According to the Articles of Confederation, the money
power was lodged in Congress. In many of the States, however, radical
factions supported by debtors, small farmers, mechanics, and other lowincome groups gained control of the State legislatures and used their influence to pass laws fixing prices in paper money, fining merchants for
their refusal to accept paper currency at face value, suspending the collection of debts, and forbidding courts to grant judgments for debt. In
New England and in the middle Atlantic States, unruly mobs intimidated lawyers and judges, burned courthouses, and interfered with the
administration of the law.
The most widely publicized event was Shays’ Rebellion, which occurred in Massachusetts in 1786. Daniel Shays, leading an armed band of
farmers and debtors, closed down the courts in the interior and western
part of the State and threatened to march on Boston if the legislature did
not pass inflationary legislation. Military force was required to put down
the uprising. The Articles of Confederation were often blamed for these
outbreaks of lawlessness, for the financial chaos of the country, and for
the assaults on the rights of property. Shays’ Rebellion probably quickened the pace toward constitutional reform. Those clauses in the Constitution prohibiting the States from coining money, emitting bills of credit,
making anything but gold and silver legal tender in payment of debt,
and impairing the obligation of contracts are directly attributable to these
paper-money struggles in the 1780s.
Despite its many shortcomings, our nation’s first instrument of national government was by no means a total failure. Under the Articles of
Confederation, the United States fought to a successful conclusion a long
war with one of the most powerful nations on earth, established a new
government under a written constitution, and united a diverse population of some three million people scattered over thousands of miles of
wilderness. No attempts were made to overthrow the government, and
the regime actually achieved a fair degree of order and stability without
trampling on the rights of people.