Shays’ Rebellion, a Familiar Formula, and a Necessary Result

An early 20th-century portrayal of Daniel Shays's forces after an attempt to lay siege to the Springfield armory. Public Domain

On May 16, 1771, approximately 3,500 men met at a large field in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. For about two decades, the fight over excessive taxation and political corruption had increased from debate to protests to rioting. Now, it was an armed struggle. Of the 3,500 men who met near Great Alamance Creek, 2,000 were citizen farmers called Regulators. The others—slightly outnumbered, but better armed and better organized—were North Carolina militiamen. They had been sent by Governor James William Tryon to quell the rebellion.

Four months prior, on Jan. 15, Governor Tryon had signed the Johnston Act, which was “​​An Act for Preventing Tumultuous and Riotous Assemblies, and for the More Speedy and Effectually Punishing the Rioters, and for Restoring and Preserving the Public Peace of This Province.” What the Act did not do, obviously, was address the farmers’ grievances.

Before the breakout of armed hostility, the farmers requested one last time to meet with Governor Tryon. The governor responded that the farmers had to first lay down their arms, and they had one hour to do so. The farmers responded defiantly: “Fire and be damned.”

A postcard illustration of the Battle of Alamance. PD-US

The militia responded in kind. After a two-hour battle, the militia had defeated the rebel farmers. In the process, nine militia members were killed and 61 wounded. The casualty numbers among the farmers went unrecorded. The day after the battle, Tryon promised amnesty to any Regulator who took an oath of loyalty to the colony. More than 6,400 took the oath.

This rebellion was officially quelled, but it was hardly the first or the last of its kind among the American colonists. Indeed, the 1770s would be a decade of debate, protests, rioting, and, eventually, armed resistance.

The Ultimate Rebellion

Four years after the Battle of Alamance, the Massachusetts colonists set in motion the ultimate rebellion: the American Revolution. This war was fought over similar issues. According to the colonists, the British Parliament and King George III—stationed 3,000 miles away in London—had become tyrants by introducing laws and acts without the colonists’ consent.

For 150 years, the British had practiced the governmental policy of “salutary neglect.” British debt from the Seven Years’ War (known in America as the French and Indian War), however, had driven the king and Parliament to unilaterally institute laws and administer taxes on the colonists. One of the common refrains during the Revolution was “taxation without representation is tyranny.”

James Otis Jr., a Massachusetts lawyer, was one of the first and most prominent people to protest these laws and taxes. He is also credited with coining the “taxation without representation” phrase. Otis had taken umbrage with government-issued writs of assistance, which practically eliminated the right to private property. These writs, according to Otis, were “the worst instrument of arbitrary power” and allowed “every one with this writ” to “control, imprison, or murder any one within the realm.”

A likeness of James Otis Jr., after the painting by Joseph Blackburn. Emmet Collection of Manuscripts. (Public Domain

Otis’s “Against Writs of Assistance” speech came a decade before the Regulators formed battle lines in the Piedmont, and 15 years before delegates from the 13 colonies met in Philadelphia to declare America’s independence. The American colonists had followed the same formula as the North Carolina farmers: debate, protest, riot, and then armed resistance.

A New, But Difficult Beginning

Twenty years after Otis’s famous speech, 10 years after the Battle of Alamance, and five years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but officially over. In October 1781, the British were defeated at the Battle of Yorktown. When British Prime Minister Lord North received the news of the defeat at Yorktown, he cried out, “Oh God! It is all over!”

Indeed, it was all over. After signing the Treaty of Paris on Sept. 3, 1783, the Americans were left to rule themselves. Self-governance after a revolution, however, was difficult. The war took a toll on a once-prosperous economy for various reasons, but mainly because its traditional and primary trading partner, Great Britain, implemented trade restrictions and heavily restricted American imports. With America’s agrarian economy, the farmers again took a major hit.

Just as the farmers struggled, so did the merchants. Foreign and domestic creditors, fearing bankruptcy or that they would never be paid back, were at the doors of both farmers and merchants, demanding loan repayments. The states struggled to repay their debts, which forced them to raise taxes. The federal government had war debts to pay, but under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government was powerless to raise taxes from the states.

A Return to Armed Resistance

The Massachusetts farmers were hit especially hard, as many were forced to surrender property or their land in order to pay off their debts. Some who couldn’t pay were thrown into debtors’ prisons. To add insult to injury, many of these farmers had fought in the Revolutionary War and were actually owed money for their military service.

An engraving depicting a brawl between a Massachusetts government supporter and a rebel, during Shays's Rebellion (1786-87). Undated color illustration. (Wmpetro /CC BY-SA 4.0)

During the summer of 1786, the Massachusetts farmers tried to convince the state legislature to relieve the tax burden, or at least close the courts so farmers wouldn’t lose their property. The farmers were met with the same response that the Regulators had received in 1771 and that the Second Continental Congress had received after sending King George III the Olive Branch Petition. These citizens had followed the formula of debate, protest, and rioting, and were now at the final stage: armed resistance.

It was during this week in history, on Aug. 29, 1786, that 1,500 armed farmers, calling themselves “Regulators,” seized the courthouse in Northampton, Massachusetts. Among the farmers was Daniel Shays, a former captain in the Continental Army. Throughout the following month of September, the courts in Berkshire, Middlesex, Plymouth, and Worcester counties were blocked by armed farmers. Shays quickly rose to prominence among the farmers and led more than a thousand men to march on the Massachusetts Supreme Court in Springfield to prevent its proceedings. It was the beginning of what famously became known as Shays’ Rebellion.

This armed resistance, however, resulted in some relief, as the state legislature agreed to suspend debt repayments and stopped foreclosures for several months. The legislature, however, also passed legislation similar to the Johnston Act. The Militia Act made it illegal to join the ongoing farmers revolt. The Riot Act prohibited the gathering of a dozen or more armed persons. It also allowed sheriffs to beat, imprison, or even kill rioters. Lastly, habeas corpus was suspended for anyone involved in the ongoing rebellion.

The rebellion had grown, but more than that, those who were not directly involved in the rebellion, were often sympathetic to the farmers’ and former soldiers’ plight. It proved difficult to garner enough militia members to stanch the growing revolt. There was great concern about the rebellion, even among the most prominent American farmers and former soldiers, such as George Washington.

An illustration of Daniel Shays from "Our First Century," 1878. by Richard Miller Devens. Public Domain

“If three years ago any person had told me that at this day, I should see such a formidable rebellion against the laws & constitutions of our own making as now appears I should have thought him a bedlamite—a fit subject for a mad house,” Washington wrote to his former general Henry Knox.

The Springfield Standoff

With Shays’ Rebellion already in Springfield, Knox feared the group’s next destination would be the armory where 7,000 guns, bayonets, artillery, and gunpowder were stationed. He requested Congress send men to protect the armory. But Congress, just as with taxation, was practically helpless. By December, Governor James Bowdoin, of Massachusetts and Benjamin Lincoln, a former general in the Continental Army, raised money from local merchants to form a militia, combat the growing crisis, and keep Shays and the Regulators from taking the armory.

On Jan. 25, 1787, Shays and 1,500 Regulators marched to the armory. Awaiting them was Bowdoin’s militia under the command of Maj. Gen. William Shepard. Simultaneously, Shays sent a letter to Lincoln in a seemingly last-ditch effort to resolve the issue. Part of his letter stated, “The people now in arms in Defence of their Live and Liberties will Quietly Return to their Respective habitations patiently Waiting and hoping for a Constitutional Relief from the Insupportable Burdens they now Labour under.”

If Lincoln did respond, Shays didn’t receive it. As the Regulators neared the armory, the militia fired several warning shots. The Regulators took no heed. Shepard directed his men to fire grapeshot into the 1,500 armed farmers. Four were killed and dozens wounded. The rest fled.

Early the following month, Lincoln and his militia marched through a winter storm and conducted a surprise attack on the remaining rebels, officially ending Shays’ Rebellion. Shays was one of the many who fled and escaped into another state, possibly Vermont or New Hampshire. Many of the rebels were pardoned, including Shays, in 1788.

‘Tugging the Federal Head’

When news reached Washington of the rebellion’s conclusion, he wrote a congratulatory note to Knox. “I sincerely congratulate you; hoping that good may result from the cloud of evils which threatened, not only the hemisphere of Massachusetts but by spreading its baneful influence, the tranquility of the Union.”

Washington, among others, however, was aware this rebellion underlined a larger problem: the evident weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. “The consequences of a lax, or inefficient government, are too obvious to be dwelt on,” he wrote to James Madison in November during the rebellion. “Thirteen Sovereignties pulling against each other and all tugging the federal head, will soon bring ruin on the whole.”

What was needed was what Shays had mentioned: “constitutional relief.” Due in large part to Shays’ Rebellion and the issues it highlighted, the leaders of the new country, such as Washington and Madison, agreed that “constitutional relief” was required—and sooner rather than later.

Exactly four months after the standoff at the Springfield armory, which effectively ended Shays’ Rebellion, delegates from all 13 states began to gather in Philadelphia for a convention. What developed from this convention was the United States Constitution—the oldest constitution in history and the source of “the tranquility of the Union.”

“Washington as Statesman at the Constitutional Convention,” 1856, by Junius Brutus Stearns. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Public Domain

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