Shays’s Rebellion of 1786

Shays’s Rebellion

Background

After winning the revolution against the British in 1783, the victorious American soldier-citizens went home with optimism for a bright future. Almost immediately, though, things began to get grim. The lack of centralized federal power bred local governments that ruled with dictatorial corruption. A postwar economic depression hit hard. Boston merchants, in debt to foreign suppliers, demanded immediate payment from debtors. Farmers in Western Massachusetts discovered that much of their state- and bank-issued currency was now worth much less than its face value. Many were sent to debtors’ prison and saw their land, livestock and belongings sold for pennies on the dollar.

Protest
A 39-year-old farmer and former captain in the Revolutionary War, Daniel Shay, became the leader for a group of increasingly desperate farmers. At first they peacefully petitioned the government against the political forces that seemed to unfairly target farmers and working people. Disproportionate property taxes, poll taxes that made voting unaffordable, harsh debt laws, unsympathetic judges, the high cost of pressing and defending law suits, and the lack of stable currency left people at the mercy of banks and merchants to define how much their property was “really” worth.

When it became clear their protests were being ignored, the desperate farmers’ tactics escalated. They began by raiding jailhouses to free imprisoned debtors. Wearing their old Continental Army uniforms (with a sprig of hemlock tucked into their hats), the self-named “Regulators” occupied the Northampton courthouse on August 29, 1786, making it impossible for the court to imprison debtors or seize their property. Inspired by this act of insurrection other farmers occupied courthouses in Concord, Taunton, Great Barrington and Worcester. In late September Captain Shays lead a band of 1,500 followers to occupy the Springfield Courthouse to prevent the Supreme Judicial Court from doing business.

Revolt
Shays and his men swore they were not leading an insurrection, but rather were continuing the 1776 revolt against tyranny. “I earnestly stepped forth in defense of this country,” wrote one member of the group in an open letter to the public, “and liberty is still the object I have in view.”

In response, Governor James Bowdoin of Massachusetts, funded by contributions from large Boston merchants, hired 4,400 militiamen under the command of General Benjamin Lincoln to put down the revolt. When Shays heard of Lincoln’s attempt to capture the Worcester debtors’ court in January 1787, he led 2,000 volunteers in an assault on the Federal Arsenal in Springfield hoping to capture the armory and beef up their firepower. They believed their neighbors and fellow veterans would join them, as had happened in previous raids. Instead, to shouts of “Murder!” a much smaller force of mercenaries fired cannons into the crowd, killing four men and injuring 20, and repelling Shays’s Regulators.

In the meantime General Lincoln marched his men through a nighttime snowstorm from Worcester to Springfield, taking the Regulators by surprise and forcing them to surrender.

Pardons for Treason?
Offered a general amnesty, most of Shays’s men took it. Shays escaped to Vermont, but he was tried in absentia for treason, along with six other leaders.

But what to do with them? Samuel Adams, former Revolutionary agitator and now back in his role as an affluent businessman, argued for execution. “Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished,” he wrote, “but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.”

Thomas Jefferson was one of the few who disagreed. “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing,” he wrote from Europe. “It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.” General Lincoln, who had successfully subdued the rebellion, also advocated clemency.

Nevertheless seven of the leaders were sentenced to death. Two were hanged. Others were publicly marched to the gallows before being informed that they had been reprieved by Massachusetts’s new governor, John Hancock.

Defender of Liberty

Shays avoided the drama. He applied for amnesty from the safety of Vermont and permanently relocated to New York. The government eventually pardoned him for his part in the rebellion that bears his name. He retired on a veteran’s pension for his service in the Revolutionary War. Daniel Shays died in 1825, maintaining up to the end that his fight in Massachusetts was for the same principles he defended in 1776.

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