Shays' Rebellion

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Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts from 1786 to 1787. The rebels, led by Daniel Shays and known as Shaysites (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 militia that had been raised as a private army defeated an attack on the federal Springfield Armory by 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 has written,

Armed conflict

After several years of irregular "conventions" sending petitions to the Massachusetts General Court (the state legislature) for tax and debt relief, and mobs shutting down local courts (to prevent judges from enforcing debt collection), a lack of relief prompted even more radical action.

In 1786 or 1787, two Revolutionary War veterans, Daniel Shays of Pelham, Massachusetts and Luke Day of West Springfield, Massachusetts, led semi-armed mobs in military-style drills on the West Springfield town common, and threatened the legislature and local courts. Governor James Bowdoin ordered the local militia of 600 men under the command of General William Shepherd to protect the Springfield court.

Shays sent a message to Day proposing an attack on January 25, 1787, before General Benjamin Lincoln's 4,000-man combined Boston and Springfield militia could arrive. Day's response that his forces would not be ready until the 26th was never received (thus providing a real-world example of the Two Generals' Problem). Shays attacked the Armory not knowing he would not have reinforcements.

General Shepherd's forces were unpaid and without food or arms. Shepherd had requested permission to use the weaponry in the Springfield Armory, but Secretary of War Henry Knox had denied the request on the grounds that it required Congressional approval, and that Congress was out of session.

When Shays and his forces attacked, Shepherd ordered a warning shot, followed by a single round into the oncoming mob. Two or three of the Shaysites were killed, and the rest fled north. On the opposite side of the river, Day's forces also fled north. The militia captured many of the rebels on 4 February 1787 in Petersham, Massachusetts; by March there was no more armed resistance.

General Shepherd reported to his superiors that he had made use of the armory without authorization, and returned the weapons in good condition after the crisis had ended.

Several of the rebels were fined, imprisoned, and sentenced to death (but not actually executed), but in 1788 a general amnesty was granted.

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,

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.

References

External links

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

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