On This Day: U.S. farmers rebel against merchant-based economy, lose to merchant-hired army - Jan. 25, 1787
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Shay's Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes on both individuals and their trades. The fighting took place in the areas around Springfield during 1786 and 1787.
In 1787, the protestors marched on the federal Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government.
The rebellion's largest confrontation, outside the Springfield Armory, [resulted] in the killing of four rebels and the wounding of twenty [on January 25, 1787].
The federal government, severely limited in its prerogatives under the Articles of Confederation, found itself unable to finance troops to put down the rebellion; it was consequently put down by the Massachusetts State Militia under William Shepard, alongside a privately funded local militia led by former Continental Army officer Benjamin Lincoln.
Background
Prior to the 19th century, the economy of rural New England largely consisted of subsistence agriculture, particularly in the hill towns of central and western Massachusetts. Some residents in these areas had few assets beyond their land, and they bartered with one another for goods and services.
In lean times, farmers might obtain goods on credit from suppliers in local market towns who would be paid when times were better. In contrast, there was a market economy in the more economically developed coastal areas of Massachusetts Bay and in the fertile Connecticut River Valley, driven by the activities of wholesale merchants dealing with Europe and the West Indies. The state government was dominated by this merchant class.
When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, Massachusetts merchants' European business partners refused to extend lines of credit to them and insisted that they pay for goods with hard currency, despite the country-wide shortage of such currency. Merchants began to demand the same from their local business partners, including those operating in the market towns in the state's interior.
Many of these merchants passed on this demand to their customers, although Governor John Hancock did not impose hard currency demands on poorer borrowers and refused to actively prosecute the collection of delinquent taxes. The rural farming population was generally unable to meet the demands of merchants and the civil authorities, and some began to lose their land and other possessions when they were unable to fulfill their debt and tax obligations. This led to strong resentments against tax collectors and the courts, where creditors obtained judgments against debtors, and where tax collectors obtained judgments authorizing property seizures.
Veterans had received little pay during the war and faced added difficulty collecting payments owed to them from the State or the Congress of the Confederation. Some soldiers began to organize protests against these oppressive economic conditions. In 1780, Daniel Shays resigned from the army unpaid and went home to find himself in court for non-payment of debts. He soon realized that he was not alone in his inability to pay his debts and began organizing for debt relief.
Rebellion
The federal government had been unable to recruit soldiers for the army because of a lack of funding, so Massachusetts leaders decided to act independently. On January 4, 1787, Governor Bowdoin proposed creating a privately funded militia army. Former Continental Army General Benjamin Lincoln solicited funds and raised more than £6,000 from more than 125 merchants by the end of January. The 3,000 militiamen who were recruited into this army were almost entirely from the eastern counties of Massachusetts, and they marched to Worcester on January 19.
While the government forces assembled, Shays and Day and other rebel leaders in the west organized their forces establishing regional regimental organizations that were run by democratically elected committees. Their first major target was the federal armory in Springfield. General Shepard had taken possession of the armory under orders from Governor Bowdoin, and he used its arsenal to arm a militia force of 1,200. He had done this even though the armory was federal property, not state, and he did not have permission from Secretary of War Henry Knox.
The insurgents were organized into three major groups and intended to surround and attack the armory simultaneously. Shays had one group east of Springfield near Palmer. Luke Day had a second force across the Connecticut River in West Springfield. A third force under Eli Parsons was situated to the north at Chicopee.
The rebels originally had planned their assault for January 25. At the last moment, Day changed this date and sent a message to Shays indicating that he would not be ready to attack until the 26th. Day's message was intercepted by Shepard's men. As such, the militias of Shays and Parsons approached the armory on the 25th not knowing that they would have no support from the west.
Instead, they found Shepard's militia waiting for them. Shepard first ordered warning shots fired over the heads of Shays' men. He then ordered two cannons to fire grapeshot. Four Shaysites were killed and 20 wounded. There was no musket fire from either side. The rebel advance collapsed with most of the rebel forces fleeing north. Both Shays' men and Day's men eventually regrouped at Amherst, Massachusetts.
General Lincoln immediately began marching west from Worcester with the 3,000 men that had been mustered. The rebels moved generally north and east to avoid him, eventually establishing a camp at Petersham, Massachusetts. They raided the shops of local merchants for supplies along the way and took some of the merchants hostage.
Lincoln pursued them and reached Pelham, Massachusetts on February 2. He led his militia on a forced march to Petersham through a bitter snowstorm on the night of February 3–4, arriving early in the morning. They surprised the rebel camp so thoroughly that the rebels scattered "without time to call in their out parties or even their guards". Lincoln claimed to capture 150 men but none of them were officers, and historian Leonard Richards has questioned the veracity of the report. Most of the leadership escaped north into New Hampshire and Vermont, where they were sheltered despite repeated demands that they be returned to Massachusetts for trial.
Aftermath
Lincoln's march marked the end of large-scale organized resistance. Ringleaders who eluded capture fled to neighboring states, and pockets of local resistance continued.
Most of Lincoln's army melted away in late February as enlistments expired, and he commanded only 30 men at a base in Pittsfield by the end of the month. In the meantime, some 120 rebels had regrouped in New Lebanon, New York, and they crossed the border on February 27, marching first on Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a major market town in the southwestern corner of the state. They raided the shops of merchants and the homes of merchants and local professionals. This came to the attention of Brigadier John Ashley, who mustered a force of some 80 men and caught up with the rebels in nearby Sheffield late in the day for the bloodiest encounter of the rebellion: 30 rebels were wounded (one mortally), at least one government soldier was killed, and many were wounded. Ashley was further reinforced after the encounter, and he reported taking 150 prisoners.
Consequences
Four thousand people signed confessions acknowledging participation in the events of the rebellion in exchange for amnesty. Several hundred participants were eventually indicted on charges relating to the rebellion, but most of these were pardoned under a general amnesty that excluded only a few ringleaders. Eighteen men were convicted and sentenced to death, but most of these had their sentences commuted or overturned on appeal or were pardoned. John Bly and Charles Rose, however, were hanged on December 6, 1787. They were also accused of a common-law crime, as both were looters.
Shays was pardoned in 1788 and he returned to Massachusetts from hiding in the Vermont woods. He was vilified by the Boston press, who painted him as an archetypal anarchist opposed to the government. He later moved to the Conesus, New York area, where he died poor and obscure in 1825.
The crushing of the rebellion and the harsh terms of reconciliation imposed by the Disqualification Act all worked against Governor Bowdoin politically. He received few votes from the rural parts of the state and was trounced by John Hancock in the gubernatorial election of 1787. The military victory was tempered by tax changes in subsequent years. The legislature cut taxes and placed a moratorium on debts and also refocused state spending away from interest payments, resulting in a 30-percent decline in the value of Massachusetts securities as those payments fell in arrears.
Vermont was an unrecognized independent republic that had been seeking independent statehood from New York's claims to the territory. It became an unexpected beneficiary of the rebellion by sheltering the rebel ringleaders. Alexander Hamilton broke from other New Yorkers, including major landowners with claims on Vermont territory, calling for the state to recognize and support Vermont's bid for admission to the union. He cited Vermont's de facto independence and its ability to cause trouble by providing support to the discontented from neighboring states, and he introduced legislation that broke the impasse between New York and Vermont. Vermonters responded favorably to the overture, publicly pushing Eli Parsons and Luke Day out of the state (but quietly continuing to support others). Vermont became the fourteenth state after negotiations with New York and the passage of the new constitution.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion
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