Shays's Rebellion

Shays's Rebill was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts from 1786 to 1787. The rebels, led by Daniel Shays and known as Shaysites (or Regulators), were mostly small farmers angered by crushing debt and taxes. Failure to repay such debts often resulted in imprisonment in debtor's prisons or the claiming of property by the state. The rebellion started on August 29, 1786. A Massachusetts militia that had been raised as a private army defeated the main Shaysite force on February 3, 1787. There was a lack of an institutional response to the uprising, which energized calls to reevaluate the Articles of Confederation and gave strong impetus to the Constitutional Convention which began in May 1787.

Origins

The rebellion was led by Daniel Shays, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. The war's debt ultimately trickled down to individuals, in large part to small farmers. In addition, the tax system at the time — a direct capitation (poll tax) — was highly regressive, especially given the fact that there was a dichotomy in eighteenth century Massachusetts economy. Much of the western and central parts of the Commonwealth had a barter economy, as opposed to the monetary economy that existed in the eastern part of the Commonwealth. Compounding the east–west dichotomy was the fact that certain mature western and central Massachusetts towns (such as Northampton or Hadley) possessed more developed monetary economies, whereas other towns (such as Amherst or Pelham) subsisted on a barter economy. As a result, to meet their debts, many small farmers were forced to sell their land, often at less than one-third of fair market price to eastern Massachusetts speculators. Loss of such property could reduce families to extreme poverty. It also often meant that such men might lose their right to vote since suffrage was often tied to property ownership.

Furthermore, Massachusetts rewrote credit schemes at the time to be administered by elected rather than appointed officials. These efforts were resisted and obstructed by wealthy and influential parties, led by men like Governor James Bowdoin. Governor Bowdoin had strong control of the government. Because of the property eligibility requirements for office at the time, when Bowdoin was elected governor many of the people in western Massachusetts were outraged by what they perceived as injustice.

As Scott Tras wrote,

[T]he nationalists took advantage of a propitious rebellion, that of Daniel Shays, a former Continental Army officer. Shays and other local leaders led an uprising of distressed farmers from western Massachusetts groaning under the load of heavy taxes assessed to pay the interest and principal (at face value in specie) of the state's wartime debt. During an economic depression, with farm prices low and foreign markets closed, the state government was taxing the farmers (payable in hard money only) to pay wealthy eastern creditors who had lent depreciated paper (accepted at full face value) to the state government for bonds during the war.

The farmers either could not or would not pay, and when they failed to do so, state judges were quick to confiscate their farms. The farmers organized into a militia and marched on the courts, which they closed. Seeing an opportunity, the nationalist leaders were quick to misrepresent the grievances and aims of the insurgents. They claimed that the Shaysites, and similar groups in other states, were radicals, inflationists, and levelers out to defraud their creditors and redistribute property, instead of being, what in truth they were, property-owning, anti-tax rebels who wanted to keep their farms.

Obviously, the nationalists wanted to scare the country into supporting a more vigorous government. George Washington was terrified. "We are fast verging toward anarchy and confusion," he wrote. His nationalist friends did their best to heighten his terror. Henry Knox wrote Washington of the Shaysites that "their creed is that the property of the United States" having been freed from British exactions "by the joint exertions of all, ought to be the common property of all." This was utterly false, but it did the trick. Washington agreed to be the presiding officer at the constitutional convention. Later, [James] Madison in Federalist No. 10 warned that without the strong arm of a vigorous central government, the states would be vulnerable to movements motivated by "a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property" and for other "improper or wicked project[s]." The Massachusetts historian Mercy Otis Warren, a contemporary of these events, warned of "discontents artificially wrought up, by men who wished for a more strong and splendid government.

Rebellion

File:Shays.jpg

The painting shows the Massachusetts "Regulators", Shays is seen sitting in front with his hat off.

Calling themselves "Regulators," men from all over western and central Massachusetts began to agitate for a change to a more democratic system. Initial disturbances were mostly peaceful and centered primarily on freeing jailed farmers from debtor's prisons or stopping courts from holding trial to claim land. Shays gathered many outraged farmers for a meeting at Conkey's Tavern, where he vented his anger and said they should rebel. In August 1786, the conflict escalated into a statewide movement when armed Regulators shut down the unpopular debtors' courts in Northampton, Worcester, Concord, and elsewhere. Shays continued to hold meetings at Conkey's Tavern and encourage rebellion. Militia groups called out to confront the Regulators often refused to confront their neighbors or failed to muster.

What is striking about Shays' Rebellion is that, although there was a great deal of confrontation, there were few casualties or damages until the final battles. This was a political struggle of armed demonstrators. For example, in July, 1786, militia units had converged on Springfield, Massachusetts. There, instead of seizing the federal arsenal, they had merely paraded in the streets before a politely drawn up local militia. However, they were dispersed after a volley of cannon balls was fired upon the ranks killing four regulators on the command of Major General Lincoln.

The rebellious forces were led by a number of prominent local people. Although Daniel Shays, a farmer from East Pelham and a former captain in the Revolutionary War, was most often identified as the overall commander of these forces, in fact leadership was collective among a number of local leaders. For example, another key leader was Luke Day, the son of a wealthy family in West Springfield. This points to the fact that while the Regulators were usually characterized as rabble, they were, in addition to yeoman farmers and other small landowners, town leaders, members of prominent local families, and very often veterans of the Massachusetts Line including their officers. For example, in Amherst, virtually every key town leader was involved in the regulation in one form or another. Many had distinguished military records; Daniel Shays, for example, a former enlisted man who was eventually promoted to an officer, had been decorated by the Marquis de Lafayette and honored by George Washington himself.

Springfield, 1787

Because of both the lack of a significant standing army and of statutory power to intervene in the affairs of the individual states under the government of the time, the Congress of the Confederation was prevented from sending federal forces. The state government had always relied on the militia for civil order, but it was helpless in the face of wholesale resistance. Due to a lack of funds and some empathy for the Regulators, the Massachusetts General Court was unwilling to approve the raising of a militia. After months of indecision and desperate for a solution, in late December 1786, Gov. James Bowdoin and a number of Boston-area bankers raised a pool of private money and hired some 4,400 mercenaries (later legitimized as a militia), under the command of General Benjamin Lincoln. When the Regulators heard about the army, they planned to return to the federal arsenal in Springfield for more weapons.

The rebels were divided into three widely separated regiments led by local leaders. Daniel Shays' unit was to the east in Palmer, Eli Parson's to the north in Chicopee, and Luke Day's across the Connecticut River in West Springfield. The plan had been to attack on January 25, but Luke Day decided to postpone that to January 26. His note informing his other commanders was intercepted. As a result, only two of the regiments arrived on the late afternoon of January 25, marching through some four feet of deep snow. Leading the small army were some four hundred "Old Soldiers" marching eight abreast.

Facing them were twelve hundred militiamen led by General William Shepherd, who had managed to keep the militia of Springfield and its environs from becoming Regulators. Shepherd had decided to seize the arsenal without authorization to keep it out of the hands of the rebels. He had deployed several of the arsenal's artillery pieces. As the rebels advanced, he ordered the guns to fire over the troops' heads. Instead of the rebels faltering as he hoped, they accelerated. However, the fire of the cannons panicked several inexperienced mounted troops behind the veterans, and more than a dozen fell from their horses. At that moment, Shepherd ordered his cannons to fire at "waistband height" as a hidden howitzer fired a load of grapeshot at their flank. Four men were killed — the first casualties of the rebellion — and twenty were wounded. The raw militia at the rear fled at that point, leaving the veterans alone. Seeing that they were now badly outnumbered, the rebels then retreated. The next morning, Lincoln's army of 4,400 arrived after a long march from Worcester through deep snow.

Retreat and defeat

Shays and his followers were pursued by Lincoln's now-legitimate militia to Petersham, where they were defeated on February 4 1787. Shays and many of the leaders escaped to Vermont, where they were sheltered by Ethan Allen and other prominent Vermonters. Vermont Governor Thomas Chittenden is believed to have helped shelter these refugees, though he publicly condemned the practice. Shays himself was sentenced to death for treason, but he and many other leaders were pardoned in June 1788. The breakup of this rebel army was followed by guerrilla warfare, including attacks on wealthy landowners, the freeing of jailed farmers, and arson. The last known battle of this kind was fought in South Egremont. In the end, only two men, John Bly and Charles Rose, were hanged for their part in the rebellion.

In exchange for amnesty, Shays' followers were banned from elected office for three years and were not allowed to serve on juries or vote. Eventually the force for the rebellion was dissipated both by an improving economy and by elections that replaced some incumbents with individuals sympathetic to the rebellion. These elections (despite the ban) included many of Shays' followers.

Legacy

The rebellion was closely watched by the nation's leaders, who were alarmed at what they saw as an effort to "level" the inequalities the new nation was experiencing in the aftermath of the Revolution. George Washington, for example, exchanged dozens of letters through the fall and early winter of 1786–87, and it can be argued that the alarm he felt at the rebellion in Massachusetts was a strong motivation to bring him from retirement and work for a stronger central government.. Most alarming for Washington and other early American elitists such as Samuel Adams and former general Henry Knox was the very real helplessness that the Confederation government had in the face of a rebellion that had nearly seized one of the few federal arsenals the country had. Adams was, in fact, so disturbed by the events of the rebellion that the once great advocate of revolution called for the deaths of the men rebelling against ostensibly similar oppression. He would state "In monarchy the crime of treason may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of republic ought to suffer death."

However, not all founding fathers felt that the rebellion was a bad thing. On November 13 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to New York senator William S. Smith saying,

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. …God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

In the aftermath of the Newburgh Conspiracy in 1783, the high cost of a standing army, and the country's discomfort with a standing army, the Confederation Congress had nearly completely demobilized the army. In the face of the increasing unrest through the fall of 1786, Knox ordered an expansion of the Continental Army; by mid-January, he'd managed to recruit only 100 men.

Some of the nation's leaders had long been frustrated by the weakness of the Articles of Confederation. James Madison, for example, initiated several efforts to amend them, efforts that were blocked by small, but significant, minorities in Congress. Emboldened by his success in the Maryland-Virginia border dispute of 1784–5, Madison decided that decisions outside Congress were the only way for states to resolve their various commercial and other problems. Others within Congress worried that the government was too weak to turn back outside invasions, but the general sentiment against standing armies kept the power of the government small.

As an extension of process of working out problems between the states, Madison and others decided to call for a gathering of the states in the fall of 1786. The Annapolis Convention held in Annapolis, Maryland September 11 to September 14 1786 initially earned the acceptance of eight of the states, but several including Massachusetts, backed out, in part due to suspicion at Virginia's motives. In the end, only twelve delegates from five states (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia) appeared. The Convention did not accomplish much other than to endorse delegate Alexander Hamilton's call for a new convention in Philadelphia to "render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union."

The events of Shays' Rebellion over the coming months would strengthen the hands of those who wanted a stronger central government, and persuade many who had been undecided as to the need for such a radical change. One of the key figures, George Washington, who had long been cool to the idea of strong centralized government, was frightened by the events in Massachusetts. By January 1787, he decided to come out of retirement and to attend the convention being called for the coming May in Philadelphia. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a new, stronger government would be created under the United States Constitution.

Further reading

The earliest account of the rebellion was George Richards Minot's History of the Insurrections in Massachusetts…, 1788. Although this account was deeply unsympathetic to the rural Regulators, it became the basis for most subsequent tellings, including the many mentions of the rebellion in Massachusetts town and state histories.

David Szatmary's Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (Amherst: U. of Massachusetts Press, 1980) reassessed earlier interpretations of the rebellion. It is noteworthy for its reexamination, but some Wikipedia editors have raised concerns about the book's sources, methods, and conclusions.

Other works of note include Shays' Rebellion: Selected Essays, edited by Martin Kaufman (Westfield, Mass., 1987) and in In Debt to Shays: The Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion, edited by Robert A. Gross (Charlottesville: U. Press of Virginia, 1993).

A recent examination of the rebellion and its aftermath is found in Leonard Richards' Shays' Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle (U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). An exploration of the rebellion and its cultural legacy to the 1960s antiwar and communal Movement can be found in Amy Stevens' "Daniel Shays' Legacy? Marshall Bloom, Radical Insurgency & the Pioneer Valley" (Amherst, Collective Copies Press, 2005).

In fiction, the rebellion is the central story of James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier's children's novel The Winter Hero (Four Winds Press, 1978), and William Degenhard's earlier novel, The Regulators (The Dial Press, 1943; Second Chance Press, 1981). It also plays a central role in William Martin's The Lost Constitution (2007).

External links

• Shays' Rebellion by Chicago Solidarity (1973) from the Charlatan Stew Collection
• John Hancock's Big Toe and the Constitution by Gary North