Shays' Rebellion highlighted weaknesses of the national government because it could not mobilize what?

• A. The militia
• B. The army
• C. The police
• D. The navy

Answer: (B)

Shays’ Rebellion shows how a weak central government couldn’t mount a unified military response to a domestic uprising. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had no power to draft troops or levy taxes to fund them, and it depended on states to provide armed forces. When the rebellion broke out, there was no national army ready to be quickly mobilized and coordinated across states. States could call up their own militias, but there was no mechanism to assemble a full-scale national army fast enough to quell the insurrection. The police and navy aren’t the tool that would have handled this kind of domestic crisis, and the core issue here is the inability to mobilize an army at the national level. This weakness helped spur calls for a stronger federal framework.