The Post Revolution Crisis

The Post War Crisis

• US faced serious problems post-war
  • huge state and national debts
  • economic depression
  • too much territory to control
  • enemies/rivals on all sides
• articles of confederation government was too weak to solve problems
  • one vote per state
  • no executive or judiciary
  • no power to tax
  • states kept full sovereignty
• big questions of the Revolution unresolved:
  • role and limits of central government
  • tax collection
  • western expansion
  • fate of slavery

Paying for the Revolution

• state and national governments owed huge sums to private elite creditors
• congress asked states to help pay
  • some refused
  • some (especially Massachussetts) raised taxes
  • hit poor/middling farmers the hardest (some owed 1/3 of income in state taxes)
  • foreclosures and property loss
  • tax and foreclosed property both went to elite creditors

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