Shays' Rebellion (1786–1787): Farmers' Uprising in Massachusetts

Shays’ Rebellion was an armed uprising of farmers and Revolutionary War veterans in western and central Massachusetts between August 1786 and February 1787. Angered by heavy taxes, debt and the seizure of their property, the insurgents closed courts and tried to capture the federal arsenal at Springfield before state troops dispersed them. The revolt shocked national leaders and strengthened the movement for a new United States Constitution.

Background: debt and taxes after the Revolution

The Treaty of Paris in 1783 brought peace but not prosperity. The war had left the states and Congress deeply in debt, and the economy entered a depression as British markets closed and imported goods drained hard currency from the country.

Massachusetts, controlled by a legislature dominated by eastern merchants and creditors, chose to pay its war debts quickly. Much of the state debt was held by speculators who had bought soldiers’ and suppliers’ certificates cheaply. In 1786 the government under Governor James Bowdoin levied heavy taxes that had to be paid in gold or silver coin.

In the farming towns of the west, where people traded mostly by barter and credit, coin was scarce. Merchants in Boston called in debts from country storekeepers, who in turn sued farmers. Courts ordered the seizure of land and livestock, and debtors could be imprisoned. Many of those affected were veterans who had never been fully paid for their service.

From petitions to closing the courts

During the summer of 1786 county conventions met to list grievances. They asked for paper money, lower taxes, debt relief, the relocation of the state capital away from Boston and reform of the courts and the state senate. When the legislature adjourned without acting, protest turned to direct action.

On 29 August 1786 a crowd of several hundred armed men prevented the county court from sitting at Northampton. Over the following weeks similar crowds closed courts at Worcester, Concord, Great Barrington and elsewhere. The insurgents called themselves Regulators, a term used by earlier protest movements in the Carolinas. In late September Daniel Shays led several hundred men to Springfield, where they forced the state Supreme Judicial Court to suspend its session.

The government responded with both concessions and force. It passed a Riot Act and suspended habeas corpus, allowing suspects to be held without trial, but also offered pardons to those who took an oath of allegiance. In late November militia captured the insurgent leader Job Shattuck near Groton.

The attack on the Springfield Arsenal

Congress under the Articles of Confederation authorised the raising of troops but could not pay for them. Governor Bowdoin therefore raised a state army of several thousand militiamen, financed largely by loans from Boston merchants, and placed it under General Benjamin Lincoln.

The insurgents decided to strike first at the federal arsenal in Springfield, which held thousands of muskets and other military stores. On 25 January 1787 Shays advanced on the arsenal with roughly 1,500 men. A separate force under Luke Day, which was supposed to join the attack, did not arrive.

General William Shepard, commanding about 1,200 militia at the arsenal, fired warning shots and then artillery loaded with grapeshot into the advancing column. Four insurgents were killed and about twenty wounded. The attackers fled in disorder.

Petersham and the end of the rebellion

Lincoln’s army arrived at Springfield and pursued the retreating insurgents. On the night of 3–4 February 1787 his troops marched about 30 miles through a snowstorm and surprised the rebels at Petersham, capturing about 150 and scattering the rest. Shays and other leaders fled to Vermont, then an independent republic outside the Confederation.

The last significant clash took place at Sheffield, in Berkshire County, on 27 February 1787, when a group of insurgents returning from a raid on Stockbridge was defeated by militia; a few men were killed on both sides.

Aftermath in Massachusetts

About 4,000 people signed confessions and took the oath of allegiance in return for pardons. Courts sentenced around eighteen men to death, but almost all were pardoned or reprieved. Two men, John Bly and Charles Rose, were hanged in Berkshire County in December 1787, convicted of robbery committed during the uprising. Shays was pardoned in 1788 and later moved to New York, where he died in 1825.

Voters also delivered a political verdict. In the election of April 1787 John Hancock defeated Bowdoin for governor, and many legislators were replaced. The new government cut taxes, exempted clothing, household goods and tools of trade from seizure for debt, and allowed some debts to be paid in goods.

Key people

Daniel Shays (c. 1747–1825) had risen from the ranks to captain in the Continental Army and was respected as a veteran in his home town of Pelham. He was reluctant to be seen as the movement’s leader, but opponents made his name a label for the whole uprising.

Luke Day of West Springfield, another former Continental officer, led a separate insurgent force, and Job Shattuck of Groton led protests in Middlesex County. Eli Parsons commanded insurgents in Berkshire County.

On the government side, James Bowdoin, a wealthy Boston merchant and governor from 1785 to 1787, took a hard line. Benjamin Lincoln, a former Continental general who had surrendered at Charleston in 1780, led the state army, and William Shepard defended the Springfield Arsenal.

Influence on the Constitution

Across the country, leaders read the uprising as a sign of dangerous weakness in the national government. George Washington wrote anxiously to friends about the disorder, and his former artillery chief Henry Knox sent him exaggerated reports of the insurgents’ numbers and aims. Congress had been unable to protect its own arsenal.

The rebellion helped persuade Washington to attend the Constitutional Convention, which met in Philadelphia in May 1787. The new Constitution gave the federal government power to tax, to raise an army and to suppress insurrections, and it guaranteed each state against domestic violence.

Not everyone was alarmed. Thomas Jefferson, then minister to France, wrote to James Madison in January 1787 that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing”, arguing that occasional unrest kept governments attentive to the people. Under the new Constitution, the federal government would later act much more forcefully against the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania in 1794.

Myths and facts

Myth: Shays was the commander of a unified rebel army. The movement was decentralised, with local leaders in different counties who often acted independently, as the failure of Luke Day’s force to join the Springfield attack showed.

Fact: many insurgents saw themselves as continuing the Revolution. They used the language and methods of the 1770s, such as county conventions and closing courts, and argued that they were resisting unjust taxation imposed by a distant elite.

Timeline

• 1786, 29 August: Armed crowd closes the court at Northampton.
• 1786, 26 September: Shays and his followers force the Supreme Judicial Court to suspend sitting at Springfield.
• 1786, November: Massachusetts suspends habeas corpus; Job Shattuck is captured.
• 1787, 25 January: Militia under Shepard repel the attack on the Springfield Arsenal.
• 1787, 4 February: Lincoln’s army routs the insurgents at Petersham.
• 1787, 27 February: Last clash at Sheffield.
• 1787, April: John Hancock defeats James Bowdoin in the governor’s election.
• 1787, 25 May: The Constitutional Convention opens in Philadelphia.
• 1788, June: Daniel Shays is pardoned.

Why it matters

Shays’ Rebellion exposed the economic hardship and political divisions left by the Revolution and the inability of the Confederation to keep order. By alarming the nation’s leaders at a critical moment, it played an important part in the creation of a stronger federal government under the US Constitution.