In August 1786, Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led an armed rebellion in Springfield, Massachusetts to protest what he perceived as the unjust economic policies and political corruption of the Massachusetts state legislature.
Shays’s Rebellion exposed the weakness of the government under the Articles of Confederation and led many—including George Washington—to call for strengthening the federal government in order to put down future uprisings.
The rebellion, which revived the rhetoric of the American revolution, shaped debate over the proper scope and authority of the US government that ultimately resulted in the creation of the US Constitution.
Daniel Shays and the plight of farmers and veterans
In the eighteenth century, farmers in western Massachusetts were outraged at the taxes levied by a distant and unsympathetic government; they rebelled. The government responded by attempting to suppress the rebellion.
If you thought the government in the description is Great Britain, think again! The rebellion described above did not occur in 1776, nor did it involve Great Britain. The farmers in question—led by the very revolutionaries who had fought against such taxes in the American war for independence—were rebelling against taxes imposed by the state government of Massachusetts.
Daniel Shays, born in Massachusetts in 1747 to Irish immigrants, was a landless farm laborer when the Revolutionary War broke out. He joined the local militia, fought in the Battles of Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Lexington, and rose to the rank of captain in the Fifth Massachusetts Regiment. He was wounded in battle and never got paid for his military service. When in 1780 he returned home to Brookfield, a rural area west of Boston, he found that he was being taken to court for debts that went unpaid while he was off fighting the war. Since he had not been compensated for his service, he had no way of paying these debts.
Poor quality engraving depicting Daniel Shays and Job Shattuck in Revolutionary-era garb.
Poor quality engraving depicting Daniel Shays and Job Shattuck in Revolutionary-era garb.
Engraving depicting Daniel Shays and Job Shattuck, featured on the cover of Bickerstaff's Boston Almanack, 1787. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
After attending several town meetings, Shays discovered that many other veterans and farmers were in the same situation. They banded together to petition the Massachusetts state legislature for debt relief. The legislature was at that time dominated by Eastern banking and merchant elites who did not understand the plight of rural communities. All proposals for debt relief were rejected.
Massachusetts Governor John Hancock—signer of the Declaration of Independence—had refused to prosecute debtors for back taxes. But, in early 1785—perhaps anticipating trouble ahead—he resigned his post, claiming poor health. He was replaced by James Bowdoin, who took a much more confrontational approach. While Bowdoin initiated civil actions to collect delinquent tax debts, the state legislature imposed even more taxes.
Shays’s Rebellion and its consequences
The protest movement, in which Shays took active part and eventually assumed a leadership role, revived the rhetoric of the American revolution and the colonists’ grievances with British rule. Rural laborers opposed the economic policies and perceived corruption of Massachusetts state politics. Having just fought a revolution inspired in large part by opposition to British tax policies, they resented the state’s levying of burdensome taxes and the onerous terms of credit imposed by the banks.^1
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start superscript, 1, end superscript Job Shattuck, a farmer from Groton, led a protest in 1782, during which he and his followers physically prevented tax collectors from collecting on rural workers. The following year, in the town of Uxbridge, a mob seized confiscated property and returned it to its former owners.
In August 1786, the Massachusetts legislature adjourned without addressing the petitions for debt relief from the state’s rural communities. On August 29, a group of protestors, calling themselves the Regulators, converged on Northampton to stop the county court from convening.
In response, Governor Bowdoin drew up contingency plans to use the militia to quash any such actions in the future. On September 5, protestors shut down the court in Worcester and Governor Bowdoin ordered the militia to quell the protest. The militia, however, sympathized with the protestors and refused the governor’s order, leading Bowdoin to recruit and fund a new private militia.
On January 25, 1787, Shays led a group of nearly 1,200 protestors on a march to the federal armory in Springfield. Bowdoin’s private militia was waiting for them, and the resulting skirmish left four of Shays’s followers dead and 20 wounded.^2
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