The future father of the Alien and Sedition Acts was justifiably proud and excited. Consumer spending on Fourth of July fireworks totaled around $2.5 billion this year. Many people today don't know or care why we celebrate this event—nothing new about that. Nor is the fact that most 4th concerts segue to fireworks with the rousing 1812 Overture something to ponder—we made Tchaikovsky an honorary American long ago.

But for those who took the risk of signing the Declaration, it was the document's affirmation of the individual over government that became the hill they would die on if necessary. Government was a necessary evil, as Paine wrote, but that wouldn't stop them from somehow putting the people at the top of the food chain.

To the revolutionaries, government meant sovereignty. That was the "necessary evil" part of any government. As Rothbard might have written in this context, any anarchist thoughts would be "outside the ken of the world at the time." But how were they going to implement the individualist principles of the Declaration in a government that placed the individual under the state? On November 15, 1777 Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation as their first formal attempt at governing themselves.

There were those in positions of influence, though, who wanted a more "energetic" government than the one provided by the Articles. Today, these people would be calling for a new Pearl Harbor or 9/11 but since government coercion tends to create pushback, they didn't have long to wait for the needed catalyst.

Shays's Rebellion
In late 1786 farmers from western counties in Massachusetts were shutting down the courts in protest over onerous taxes. Newspapers described the rebels as "destitute," but this was propaganda. For every rebel who went to court as a debtor, another went as a creditor. As I wrote in a review of Leonard Richards's Shays's Rebellion,

It wasn't debt that triggered Shays's Rebellion. . .but the new state government and "its attempt to enrich the few at the expense of the many." The most glaring instance of this abuse was the decision of Massachusetts to consolidate its war notes at face value.

Even when issued, the notes traded at about one-fourth par and later declined to about one-fortieth face value. Many soldiers were paid in these notes and out of desperation sold them at about one-tenth their value. Boston speculators swooped up eighty percent of these notes, with forty percent of them owned by just 35 men. Every one of those 35 men had either served in the state house during the 1780s or had a close relative who did.

Legislators praised the speculators as "worthy patriots" who had come to the state's aid in its time of need. But these men did not buy the notes directly from the government; they bought them from farmers and soldiers at greatly depreciated prices, who were now being taxed to redeem them at full value. The speculators, most of whom had stayed home during the war, would now benefit at the expense of veterans.