Was the shay's rebellion the first battle of the revolutionary war?

Answer 1

No. Shay's Rebellion happened two years after the Revolution was won and the Peace Treaty ratified. Shay's Rebellion was begun by veterans of the war, who had not been paid for their service. There was no money in circulation, no mint to make money, and these farmer-veterans could not pay their debts. In those days the sheriff would imprison a person who owed money if the creditor asked. A person also needed "hard money" (actual coins) to pay the taxes on their land, and since "hard money" was almost impossible to come by, they could not pay their taxes and faced losing their farms. So here were the veterans whose blood won our national independence, and who werent even paid the pittance they had been promised, in jail for owing money and about to be made homeless because they could not pay their taxes, because the government was so ineffective it could not even get money into circulation, but was effective enough to have laws providing for imprisonment for debt and for foreclosure for unpaid taxes.