The Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in western Massachusetts from August 1786 to January 17871. It took place in an economic context troubled by inflation and the devaluation of the dollar.
The conflict took place whitin the framework where a revision of the administrative document of the United States, the Articles of Confederation was considered very necessary. In May 1787, the Constitutional Convention, which discussed a new constitution, met in Philadelphia. Shays' rebellion affected the course of the debate, although historians disagree on how great that influence was.
The main discussions took place during the Convention between delegates who wanted more control over the federal government - these were the federalists - and the anti-federalists who mainly wanted the power to fall to the individual states. The uprising in any case made it clear that under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government had too little say in taking action against domestic violence. The authors of the Constitution thought that the federal government could act more effectively in the case of national unrest than the various individual states, and therefore it gained more control under the Constitution. The rebellion may also have influenced the passage that states that one state must extradite a resident for trial when another state requests it.
