Shays's Rebellion

SHAYS'S REBELLION

SHAYS'S REBELLION, an agrarian rebellion centered in Massachusetts and committed to debt relief for small farmers and rural artisans, August 1786–June 1787. Though former Continental Army Captain Daniel Shays was its nominal leader, the rebellion was relatively loose and decentralized.

After the American Revolution, the new United States suffered from a severe cash-flow problem. Merchants no longer enjoyed access to British markets and were stuck with large inventories. Unable to repay English creditors, they demanded money from numerous customers carrying small debts. At the same time, the state and Confederation governments were raising taxes to fund their own war debts.

Thus farmers and rural artisans, who were accustomed to a barter economy, owed creditors and tax collectors cash they did not have. As the economy worsened, they increasingly found themselves hauled into debtors'

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courts or prisons. (Shays himself was sued twice.) Beginning in 1784, members of an inchoate agrarian movement peacefully proposed through town petitions and county conventions that states issue paper money or pass tender laws, which would allow debt payment in goods and services as well as hard currency. But with the exception of Rhode Island, New England's legislatures were dominated by commercial interests and refused to enact reform.

In the late summer and fall of 1786, armed Shaysites, adopting the symbols and rhetoric of the Revolution, started raiding and closing down various courts, aiming to suspend debt collection until states addressed their grievances. An estimated 9,000 people throughout New England participated in these early stages of rebellion.

Legislators reacted aggressively, arresting a number of Shaysites, calling out militias, suspending habeas corpus, and passing harsh laws, including the Riot Act (limiting public assembly) and the Treason Act (penalizing anti-government violence by death). Unable to requisition money to raise a proposed federal militia, local merchants funded an army of local troops.

In January, the Shaysites abandoned their policy of raiding courthouses in favor of wider rebellion. Talking now about overthrowing state government and not simply reforming debtors' courts and the tax system, about 2,500 farmers and artisans attacked the Massachusetts state arsenal at Springfield. The Shaysites were easily defeated in battle, but over the next four months small bands raided market towns such as Stockbridge and Great Barrington, kidnapping and terrorizing lawyers, merchants, military leaders, and politicians.

By June, however, the hostilities had come to an end. A number of frustrated rebels, including Shays, moved farther West where they could continue subsistence farming. In addition, the new legislature and a new governor passed a one-year tender act, and the economy started to show signs of improvement.

The rebellion, which was winding down as the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in May, helped the federalists gain control of the proceedings. Convinced that unchecked democracy and a weak national government would enable a tyranny of the majority, the delegates wrote a constitution that rolled back some of the most radical revolutionary reforms by providing for a strong, indirectly elected president, an indirectly elected senate, and appointed judges.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Szatmary, David. Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980.

Taylor, Robert Joseph. Western Massachusetts in the Revolution. Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1954.

Jeremy Derfner

See also Constitution of the United States ; Insurrections, Domestic ; and vol. 9: Shays's Rebellion .