After the Revolutionary War, Great Britain barred American merchants for selling their goods in the British West Indies. This was England’s way of punishing Americans for breaking away. The loss of the lucrative West Indies trade hurt Americans shipping and fishing industries, making life difficult for everyone, from wholesalers to retailers to farmers.

Victory had come at a price. The war had been a long and expensive undertaking, and the whole country faced serious war debt. Unable to pay Revolutionary War veterans, the Continental Congress had issued the veterans paper notes known as Continental Securities. The states promised to redeem these notes in the future.

Because veterans needed cash to pay their taxes and debts, they were forced to sell their notes to others for much less than they were worth. “Not worth a Continental,” a phrase referring to the devaluation of paper currency, became a popular saying of the day. The Continental was no longer worth its face value. In 1780, it took forty paper dollars to purchase one silver dollar. Speculators, including Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin, bought continental securities from veterans, paying only a fraction of their price. They hoped the state would eventually pay these notes at face value in specie [gold and silver], not in paper.

American soldiers who had survived the Revolutionary War returned to find their homes and land in disarray, their fields overgrown, their families suffering from lack of food, and their debts and taxes had gone unpaid. Creditors harassed debtors, paper currency had decreased in value, and gold and silver, or specie, was scarce.

This was the climate of confusion and poverty to which soldiers returned home. Massachusetts yeomen had believed that their lives would improve after the revolution, which they had fought at the expense of their own lives. Now that the war had been won, they were worse off than ever before, facing debt, high taxes, and the potential loss of their land.