Shays's Rebellion

They were burning it.

They were burning the capital building, they burned the White House, they burned the National Intelligencer, and he had to wonder, did I just lose my country? So I thought those were key moments along with Shays' Rebellion and John Quincy Adams' conscience of the country where he fought.

Everyone gives Lincoln credit and they should, but the one who laid the groundwork was John Quincy Adams to get rid of slavery.

Well, you just said we won because we just kept on going basically with with you know the george washington and the whole thing like it's basically kind of a moment about not quitting what do you think that story shows about how he handled failure and kept going

And I have a quote from Madison here, and I just paraphrase it.

Out of everything that happened that led to the writing of the Constitution, nothing did more than the Shays' Rebellion.

to get Washington's attention.

So I thought, Danielle, that's really, I wanted to do something that got people thinking, that got people researching, and what I did is I just tried to dominate that area.

So Louisiana Purchase for six months, I read everything possible, Livingston's Notes, I read books about this, got different opinions on it, dealt with a historian, but with Shays' Rebellion, I thought it was the same thing as Whiskey Rebellion when I started.

And then I realized how important it was, and you see what happened.

But he got screwed.

To see what a strong

Republican executive is capable of, it's useful to compare Shays' Rebellion before the Constitution was formed with the Whiskey Rebellion after it was formed.

When Shays' Rebellion broke out in Massachusetts, not only was the legislature powerless to do anything, some of them were participating in the rebellion itself.

There was no strong executive to put down the rebellion.

By contrast, after the formation of the Constitution, when a rebellion breaks out in western Pennsylvania, the president of the new union, George Washington, marches a massive number of troops out there to crush the rebellion.

i wanted to make it understandable and readable and i thought 10 was too many and after doing i do this series on fox nation called what makes america great so i travel the country put together 45-minute documentaries on different moments or different places and people you know whether it's thomas edison or benjamin franklin or thomas jefferson or the alamo and i got to know all these historians and i would always would say hey what's the great moment what's the moment that befuddles you that if it went the wrong way we wouldn't be the same country So I came up with Louisiana Purchase, the Boston Massacre, John Quincy Adams fighting against slavery, the conscience of the country, the burning of Washington to the ground, and what we did after when it looked like we could have been finished and the British could have gotten revenge for the Revolutionary War.

So you put together that, Shays' Rebellion that led to the Constitution.

I thought these are some crisp stories that would make people appreciate America a little bit more.

And it's not my opinions about these outcomes.

And I thought, what if I told you the six moments I thought helped work out the framework of the country that would have made, could have made our, could have broken our country, but instead helped make our country.

So, and I just thought about those moments and then who was responsible for him and the Daniel Shays' rebellion.

gave us the Constitution because he was such a war hero.

War breaks out.

Rural America has been the extraction point for whatever political, economic, or cultural class, whether they're on the left or the right, since the founding of the country.

This is a part of the reason why we have Shays' Rebellion, for crying out loud.

You know what I mean? Unless there is a sufficient amount of interest from the population to say no, We might actually ultimately agree with where you want to go, but you need to include us in a meaningful way.

So when we think about that, when we drill down to our local elections that we're coming to right now, there's a lot of different options out there that people can in good faith vote for, I think.