That did not happen in Massachusetts where conservative eastern merchant-politicians dominated the state's new government. Despite the hard times, the Massachusetts legislature sought to meet its financial obligations with ever more oppressive taxes, payable only in hard currency. Unable to pay their state taxes and private debts in so depressed an economy, many farmers were hauled into court to face not only exorbitant court costs, but the all too real threat of losing their property at public auction to pay their creditors. To the losers in this legal process, it seemed that there must exist a conspiracy among eastern politicians and merchants, many of whom were holders of the state debt that the farmers were suffering to pay off.
Shays's Rebellion: Signs of Unrest
Rumblings of discontent sounded early in the 1780s, even before the Revolution had officially ended. An itinerant evangelistic preacher, Samuel Ely, rallied disgruntled farmers in western Massachusetts to block the sitting of the civil courts. Ely eventually turned up in the eastern district of Massachusetts, now called Maine, where he joined backcountry squatters fighting against the great landed proprietors—a struggle similar to the one in the western parts of the state.
During 1785 and 1786, throughout the western counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, and Worcester, conventions met to draw up petitions to the state legislature in Boston.
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