As simply stated, a rebellion is an attempt by many people to change a government or leader of a country through the use of protest or violence. In 1786, a man had returned home after serving his country in the American Revolutionary War to find that the very government he was fighting for had turned against him. With heavy taxes, loss of livestock, and perhaps his social status at risk, he sold his most prized possessions in hopes of one day regaining control of his livelihood. This man was Daniel Shays; in the late summer of 1786 he brought together a group of like-minded farmers who were about to lose everything they had worked so hard for to an undisciplined elite. Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising triggered by financial difficulties resulting from the post-war economic depression, a credit crunch caused by a lack of hard currency, and financially harsh government policies. Daniel Shays was a poor farm laborer in Massachusetts when the Revolution broke out. who fought for the new America, a country that would promise him freedom and a life with endless possibilities. States were drafting constitutions that would guarantee religious freedoms, increase the size and power of states by allowing them to tax more progressively, and reform inheritance laws. He joined the Continental Army and saw action at the battles of Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and Saratoga. As the Revolutionary War raged between Britain and the colonies for eight years between 1775 and 1783, his farm was taxed without his knowledge. Shays managed to survive not only the battles he found himself in, but also diseases, such as smallpox, that claimed more lives than the war itself. When he was finally wounded in battle, he returned home, unpaid, or... middle of paper... carded in 1788 and returned to Massachusetts after hiding in the woods of Vermont. He later moved to New York where he lived until his death poor and lonely in 1825. The rebellion took place in a perfect political era in which reform of the country's governing document, the Articles of Confederation, was considered necessary. The federal government was particularly weak under the Articles of Confederation. Within this confederation the states often quarreled among themselves, refusing to support the national government, rendering it powerless to enforce any acts it passed. Shay's Rebellion played a small role in what shaped our American history. These rebels led some Anti-Federalists to side with the strong government. As early as 1785 many influential merchants and political officials agreed that a strong central government was what the states needed.