Many Americans were as debt-burdened as their legislatures. Even as the Annapolis conference unfolded, rural turmoil erupted in western Massachusetts as thousands of indebted farmers, struggling with soaring taxes and foreclosures on their lands, grabbed staves and pitchforks, shut down courthouses, and thwarted land seizures by force. As Hamilton had feared, after eight years of war violent protest against authority had become habitual. The farmers’ uprising was dubbed Shays’s Rebellion after one of its leaders, Daniel Shays, a former militia captain and suddenly a folk hero. At moments, it
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