The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015 | Page 19

usually did not make the polls because of distance and terrain, but if they did, the
new person in the Assembly was one who lived in the West, not just owned land
there. Examples of this were Robert Whitehall, a farmer, and William Findley, a
weaver, 1 men known and trusted by their neighbors whose politics was similar to
theirs. This new legislature passed laws that favored small farmers rather than large
companies that held a monopoly on goods.
The “bad blood” between the wealthy landowners in the East and the
poorer people who lived along the western frontier dates back before the
Revolutionary War. The early 1770s saw the occurrence of the War of Regulation.
Farmers and artisans in North Carolina, tired of the corrupt political dealings of
their leaders, managed to shut down their local governments in an attempt to elicit
change. They viewed their leaders as concerned with only the eastern merchants
and lawyers holding office, who passed laws against the farmers in West. The
Regulators attacked the courts to draw attention to their plight. However, the
governor used the garrisoned troops to quell the insurrections. Not only was the
War of Regulation significant in highlighting governmental rivalry between East
and West, but a leader of the Whiskey Rebellion, Herman Husband, took part in
the North Carolina attacks before he fled to Pennsylvania. 2
As time wore on, it became obvious that the Articles of Confederation
were not adequate to address the growing debt to foreign countries and its veterans.
Arising out of the distress caused by the Articles was an insurrection tied closely to
the Whiskey Rebellion: Shays’ Rebellion. From 1786 to 1787, Massachusetts
farmers pled with their government officials for debt relief. Many of the small
farmers were not able to pay the mortgages on their land, or only had worthless
paper money while their creditors required payment in gold or silver. They issued
petitions and held protests, but their government officials only passed more laws
that seemed to make things worse. Daniel Shays gathered over a hundred armed
men and marched on Boston when the courts charged eleven former Revolutionary
War veterans with rioting after they and some of their neighbors tried to shut down
the government. Boston’s elite saw Daniel Shays and his followers as disputing
their control, and called in the militia to bring them to justice.
After the approval of the Constitution, the debt of the individual states to
foreign countries became the nation’s debt, and Alexander Hamilton pushed
through excises on luxury items such as whiskey to pay for it, which affected the
citizens living in the frontier sections of the states more than the people who lived
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