Shays's Rebellion

SHAYS'S REBELLION. 31 August 1786–4 February 1787. As the American states struggled with the problems of establishing a viable economy despite a postwar depression, the collapse of the currency, and an aversion to taxation rooted in their colonial past, an armed revolt against constituted authority arose in central and western Massachusetts. A grassroots insurgency movement with many local leaders, the so-called rebellion came to be known by the name of one of its leaders, Daniel Shays (1747–1825), who had returned to his farm in Pelham, Massachusetts, after retiring from the Continental army in 1781 as a captain in the Fifth Massachusetts Regiment. Those who had so recently united in revolt against British authority were now divided in opinion as to whether the "right of revolution" could be exercised any time citizens objected to governmental authority. Many small farmers in towns across central and western Massachusetts objected to the General Assembly's decision that debts had to be paid in specie, a position supported by the mercantile elites in coastal towns but that posed a significant hardship in agricultural regions that lacked ready access to hard money. They also objected to the mounting number of farm and home foreclosures that threatened to strip them of the economic independence that was a central pillar of their political independence.

Mob actions started on 31 August 1786, when armed men prevented the Hampshire county court from sitting at Northampton. After similar events took place at Worcester, Concord, and Great Barrington, Governor James Bowdoin sent William Shepard (formerly colonel of the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment and now a militia major general) with six hundred militiamen to protect the state's Supreme Court, then sitting at Springfield. Five hundred insurgents confronted the militia on 26 September and obliged the court to adjourn. Because Springfield was the site of a federal arsenal, Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, on 20 October authorized the raising of 1,340 federal troops, mostly in Massachusetts and Connecticut, ostensibly for service against the Indians in the Ohio Valley but which could also be used against the insurgents. However, the slow process of raising this force meant that suppressing the insurgency depended on the willingness of Massachusetts state militiamen to act effectively against their fellow citizens.

Toward the end of 1786, as the insurgency collapsed in other parts of the state, Shays marched on Springfield the day after Christmas with some twelve hundred men to reinforce those already there under Luke Day (formerly a captain in the Seventh Massachusetts Regiment). While Shepard's small militia force continued to guard the arsenal and on 25 January 1787 repulsed a mismanaged attack by the insurgents, Governor Bowdoin called forty-four hundred militiamen into service (mainly from eastern counties) and placed at their head Major General Benjamin Lincoln, who, as Washington's second-in-command, had accepted the British surrender at Yorktown on 19 October 1781. When official funds were not rapidly forthcoming, Lincoln raised twenty thousand dollars from private sources to pay the troops. Lincoln's little army arrived at Springfield on 27 January, dispersed the force under Day, and pursued Shays toward Petersham through a blizzard. Early on 4 February, Lincoln completed a vigorous night march to surprise the insurgents, capturing 150 men and scattering the rest. By the end of February, the insurgency had been suppressed.

Acting quickly to calm public anger and quench any remaining embers of armed resistance, the Massachusetts government offered pardons to all but Shays, Day, and two others; it finally pardoned Shays, who had fled to upper New York State, on 13 June 1788, when it was clear that the violence was finished. While some looked on the insurgency as evidence that a republican form of government was too weak to be feasible, the majority interpreted the experience to mean that a stronger central government was necessary, in part to provide the means to suppress such uprisings but, better still, to prevent them by enacting measures that would improve economic conditions so that a state would not have to adopt policies that set one group of its citizens against another. Thus, Shays's Rebellion strengthened the arguments of those who sought to create a new national government and helped to speed the movement toward the creation and adoption of a new federal Constitution. The rebellion also had an immediate impact that brought relief to those who had undertaken armed resistance: the Massachusetts legislature postponed imposition of a direct tax and limited the liability of debtors, exempting tools and certain personal effects from sale to satisfy creditors. It was a small victory, but sufficient to tamp down resentment.

SEE ALSO Lincoln, Benjamin; Shays, Daniel; Shepard, William.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Richards, Leonard L. Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

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

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

                              revised by Harold E. Selesky