On September 29, 1786, farmers picked up their guns, swords, pitchforks, and fists and marched across Massachusetts to shut down the courts and riot. This seemingly random rebellion sparked from the American Revolution, when the Continental Congress printed money to pay American allies for their help, and gathered steam as the Articles of Confederation took away all power from the federal government. Patriot soldiers came home to notices asking them to appear in court, or came home to no home at all. Men who could not support their families with the little money they got from selling their crops were thrown into debtors’ prison, where mice scurried at their feet and the air smelled foul. In some states, if you didn’t own land, you couldn’t vote. Shays’ Rebellion was an important step in American History because it convinced government leaders that the republic would collapse without a strong central government. It also drew poor old Washington out of retirement.
During the American Revolution, the Continental Army was falling short of supplies. Washington worried that “Unless some great... change suddenly takes place, this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these things. Starve, dissolve, or disperse in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.” The colonies had completely relied on Great Britain for their supplies with the Navigation Acts before the Revolution, but now, their enemy had blockaded all the ports. America’s victory did not simply mean independence from Britain’s tyranny-- it also meant independence from Britain’s support as a mother country. Massachusetts’ whole economy was based on trade with the West Indies. When Britain cut off American trade with the West Indies, it hurt Massachusetts.
Hoping to delay, if not prevent, a financial disaster, the Continental Congress printed Continental dollars (worth 1/40 of a gold or silver coin) to pay their allies, such as Spain and France, for ammunition, winter coats, socks and shoes, bread, milk, candles, etc. or raw materials which Patriot women could use to make these supplies. That is how we won the war.
However, when Revolutionary War soldiers (90% of which were farmers) rode their horses home, crop prices had taken a dramatic fall. The leaders of the new republic were so afraid of losing the freedom they had fought so hard to achieve that they actually hurt the people. The states had completely different currencies and laws because the new confederation was only a “firm league of friendship” between them. In Pennsylvania, for example, they didn’t even use money. They bartered-- ten jars of honey for three chickens, three quilts for a pistol. Some states printed their own money to pay back the debt from the war without burdening its people with a heavy tax. This made it easier for the people to pay back debt, but creditors earned less from it. This worked for some states, like South Carolina. However, it led to more debt in Rhode Island.
In 1782, before talk of a rebellion, Job Shattuck led people to surround tax collectors and keep them from collecting taxes. In February of the next year, a mob captured property which had recently been taken away from a debtor and returned it to him. These events did not change the way Massachusetts dealt with its debt. In fact, it only taxed the people more.
Massachusetts, where Shays’ Rebellion took place, decided against printing paper money to pay their debt. Instead, they taxed their people. All that the people had were continental dollars they had been using since the war, but the Massachusetts state government wanted real gold and silver coins. Americans had to bring all of their paper money to the government buildings and exchange it for gold and silver at the rate of forty dollars per coin. They didn’t have enough money to pay the taxes, hence the debt. Courts bankrupted farmers and closed businesses.
But where was all of this money going to anyway? Wealthy creditors in Boston. And this made Massachusetts farmers angry--very angry.
Daniel Shay was one of these farmers, who now called themselves Regulators. He organized conventions in Conkey’s Tavern, where they expressed their problems with the new government. As Senator for Massachusetts, the first thing Samuel Adams did was try to put an end to the county conventions. The Regulators wrote petitions to the Massachusetts government and courts, but their efforts were futile. Massachusetts and the national government would not respond until America was at the brink of anarchy. At the conventions, Shay was training an army.
Shay and the “Shaysites,” dressed in their old uniforms from the Revolutionary War, marched across Massachusetts to shut down the courts of South Hampton, Pittsfield, Manchester, and Boston to the tune of flutes and drums. Jonathan Judd wrote from inside the courthouse, “Sorrowful day... brother against brother, father against son, militia at the courthouse and mob at the ferry. The mob threatens the lives of all against them.” The rebellion went on for months, from September of 1786 to February of the next year. The court couldn’t bankrupt people and put them into debtors’ prisons anymore-- they were afraid for their lives. The mob began with a number around 1000-1500 and swelled into 9,000 people. The best-known leaders of the rebellion were Daniel Shay and Job Shattuck.
General Henry Knox wrote George Washington, who at the time was hanging out with his wife at Mount Vernon, enjoying retirement, and Thomas Jefferson, who was preaching religious freedom in Virginia. Washington’s response: “Are your people mad?” We just got through a whole war to secure our freedom and our country, and now they’re trying to bring it down? Jefferson replied to Knox, “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
At the time, though, Massachusetts was in big trouble. How would they suppress the violent rebels without a national army to step in and help? Samuel Adams saw the chaos and the former leader of the Sons of Liberty warned, “Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, but a man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death!” He passed the Riot Act, which suspended habeus corpus (police could now arrest people without taking a minute to tell them why.) The act stated that if more than twelve people gathered to protest a government decision, they could be arrested, or even killed.
The rebel movement slowed when General Benjamin Lincoln and his men captured Job Shattuck. After violently searching his home and hurting his family, they finally found him and slashed his knee to make him surrender, carrying him to prison for treason (Shattuck had fought in the Revolutionary War as well). The capture was greatly exaggerated by the press.
The Shaysites were running out of ammunition. In January of 1787, they tried to capture weapons belonging to the government. When Lincoln and his men fought back, they retreated. For several years after the rebellion, Shay and the other rebels lived as outlaws. They had gone from the most admirable patriots to the most wanted rebels in the eyes of the republic. When John Hancock was re-elected to be the governor of Massachusetts, he pardoned anyone who had participated in Shays’ Rebellion, but not before two men were hanged under the leadership of Samuel Adams for rebelling. Job Shattuck narrowly escaped death in the gallows.
Shays’ Rebellion was the last straw. The men who had fought the American Revolution and written the Articles of Confederation finally realized that something had to change. If the federal government did not have power, the republic would collapse from the debt. “A Nation divided cannot stand.” Thus, the delegates met in Pennsylvania to write the Constitution and the nation became known as the United States of America. And while much blood has been shed and much injustice has been excused on its soil, the idea of being free to voice opinions has existed from the very beginning.
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