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Shays
Fought the Revolution's Final Battle, and We Lost
by George F. Smith
 Exclusive
to STR
Thanks
to Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, government now compels the
teaching of the Constitution every year on the anniversary of its
signing – September 17 – for schools that receive federal
funds. If you’re wondering where the Constitution authorizes
such a mandate, you might want to visit a school that day. Perhaps
you’d hear a “compassionate” interpretation of the General Welfare
clause, the knothole that has become a black hole. I’m sure
someone would remind you that the Constitution is a “living,
breathing” document, an expression of our collective conscience, and
to really understand its meaning we should all spend time doing
community service. [1]
I doubt you will hear that a government powerful enough to exact nearly
half our income in taxes, where Congress passes laws without reading
them or attaches them to other bills that are sure to pass – as Byrd
did with his mandate – renders constitutional discussions farcical.
[2]
But Byrd may have jeopardized leviathan’s cause if his mandate calls
attention to Shays’ Rebellion, the event that sparked the
Constitutional Convention. Leonard L. Richards, a history
professor at UMass–Amherst, has written a groundbreaking book about
the uprising that portrays the Shaysites as Regulators in the spirit of
the Revolution fighting a plundering state. [3]
Shays’ Rebellion is usually described as a revolt of poor, backcountry
farmers in western Massachusetts during the fall and winter of 1786 –
1787. During the Revolutionary War, the individual states and
Congress had issued fiduciary notes to finance U.S. military operations.
Fiduciary notes were paper money the government promised to redeem in
coin at some point in the future. When the future arrived in the
1780s, the holders of these notes demanded redemption, and the states,
including Massachusetts, were raising taxes to pay them off.
As the story is told, many farmers were too poor to pay their taxes, so
the courts were sending them to jail and seizing their farms. The
farmers were also in debt to merchants who had sold them goods on
credit. With the closing of the British West Indies to American
trade, the merchants, under pressure from their creditors, were now
demanding payment. To avoid paying their debts, the story
continues, Daniel Shays and a few other “wretched officers” from the
Revolution led backcountry rabble to shut down the courts.
Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin called out the militia to put a
stop to the uprising. When they failed to get the job done, he
turned to wealthy Bostonians to fund a temporary army. Led by
General Benjamin Lincoln, the army stopped the insurgents from seizing
the federal arsenal at Springfield in late January 1787, then crushed
the rebellion permanently a week later in a surprise attack at Petersham.
Though the top rebel leaders fled to other states, most of the others
eventually returned to their farms. Bowdoin agreed to pardon the
rebels if they signed an oath of allegiance to the state, which the vast
majority did.
Although the insurgency ended in the rout at Petersham, “Shays’s
Rebellion” has lasted to this day as a propaganda tool for state
power.
Recruiting Washington
Government-friendly versions of the insurgency spread throughout the
states and upset many elites, including George Washington, who was
enjoying a peaceful retirement at Mount Vernon. David Humphreys,
one of Washington’s former aides living in New Haven, told him the
uprising was due to a “licentious spirit among the people,” whom he
characterized as “levelers” determined “to annihilate all debts
public and private.” [4] According to Washington’s trusted friend
and former artillery commander General Henry Knox, who was planning to
build a four-story summer home on one of his Maine properties, the
insurgents wanted to seize the property of the rich and redistribute it
to the poor and desperate.
In a letter of October 23, 1786, Knox told Washington the rebels “see
the weakness of government” and thus feel free to pay little if any
taxes. According to Knox, the rebels believed that since the joint
exertions of all protected the property of the United States from Great
Britain, it rightfully belongs to all. The rebels, Knox explained,
believe that anyone who “attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy
to equity and justice, and ought to be swept [from] the face of the
earth.” [5]
Such comments didn’t surprise Washington. He had been buying
land in the Virginia backcountry for over 40 years and owned some 60,000
acres. The people who migrated to that area often ignored his
property markings, helping themselves to his timber and settling down.
This was a common problem of large landowners throughout the backcountry
of every state. In Washington’s judgment, these folk were “a
wretched lot, not to be trusted, and certainly not to be the bone and
sinew of a great nation.” [6]
On November 8, 1786, James Madison wrote to Washington saying he and
other officials had taken the liberty of nominating him to lead the
Virginia delegation at a May convention in Philadelphia. The
upcoming convention, as Alexander Hamilton had stated, would discuss how
“to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the
exigencies of the Union.” [7]
But Washington had misgivings. A convention held two months
earlier at Annapolis had failed when only five states sent
representatives, Virginia not among them. Would the one in
Philadelphia bomb and leave his reputation tarnished? Besides, he
had cited health problems (rheumatism) as a reason for not attending a
triennial meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati in Philadelphia, to
be held at the same time as the convention. How would it look if
he now accepted Madison’s offer? [8]
On March 19, 1787 Knox wrote Washington hinting that (1) he would be
given the president’s chair at the upcoming convention, and (2) he
would not be presiding over some middling conference of officials
tinkering with the “present defective confederation,” but instead
would lead a prestigious body of men as they created an “energetic and
judicious system,” one which would “doubly” entitle him to be
called The Father of His Country. [9]
While Washington absorbed those prospects, he thought about the British
prediction that American-run government would soon collapse. It was
especially disheartening to see it falter in Massachusetts, the state
with the most “balanced” constitution, where the influence of the
unwashed was supposedly kept in check. Washington, Madison and
other elites suspected their “transatlantic foe” was working
secretly with Daniel Shays to help fulfill their prophecy. And if
left unchallenged, the upheaval would spread to other states, where
“combustibles” like Shays were waiting to explode and wreak anarchy.
As Washington told Lafayette later, he could not resist the call to help
establish “a government of respectability under which life, liberty,
and property” were secure. [10]
Shays’s Rebellion, then, went from a problem to an opportunity.
It was used by certain elites to pry Washington from retirement and send
him to Philadelphia, where his status as America’s foremost icon
bestowed a noble splendor on their power grab. Staunch opponents
forced them to compromise, and the document they created would soon be
graced with a set of amendments that initially limited their power.
Nevertheless, the new constitution was a big step forward for
conservatives, who now had a government strong enough to protect them
from troublemakers like Daniel Shays and his gang. The bad guys
lost, the good guys won, so we have been told.
A Closer Look at the Rebels
Richards decided to write a book on Shays’ Rebellion when he
discovered by accident that the Massachusetts archives had microfilmed
the signatures of the 4,000 men who signed the state’s oath of
allegiance in 1787. Since many of the insurgents also included
their occupations and hometowns, he was able to gather more information
about them with the help of town archivists and historians.
Richards makes some strong points about why the standard story of
Shays’ Rebellion as an uprising of debtor farmers does not wash.
1. The western counties of Massachusetts as a whole did not rebel
against the state, nor did the vast majority of poor farmers. Of
the 187 towns that comprised the five counties in which the courts were
shut down, a mere 45 towns provided almost 80 percent of the rebels.
Seventy-two of the 187 towns did not produce a single rebel, while 34
others produced only 1-4 rebels.
The most rebellious county by far was Hampshire County, producing nearly
half the insurgents. Here, too, turnout was uneven, with eight
towns not yielding any rebels, while five others produced over 100.
Colrain was the banner town of Hampshire County, with two-thirds of the
town’s 234 adult males bearing arms against the state. Yet two
small farming communities close to Colrain, Heath and Rowe, produced not
a single rebel. [11]
2. The rebels were repeatedly described in the newspapers as
“destitute farmers” or “debt-ridden farmers.” Although the
number of debt suits in the 1780s skyrocketed, Richards found that
“there is no correlation – none whatsoever – between debt and
rebel towns.” [12]
Only two of the most rebellious towns ranked among the top 10 towns in
suits for debt, but three of the least rebellious towns were also
among the top 10.
Colrain, the most rebellious town, had 12 families involved in debt
suits during 1785 and 1786. Yet only four of these families
provided men to the town’s total of 156 rebels. Their leader,
James White, who led the assault against the Springfield arsenal, was
convicted of high treason. He was also one of Colrain’s creditors.
By contrast, the non-rebellious town of Granville had an unusually high
number of debt cases during 1785 and 1786.
At the time of the rebellion, Daniel Shays owed money to at least 10
men. But of those 10, three were rebel leaders. For every
rebel who went to court as a debtor, another went as a creditor. [13]
3. Shutting down the courts in Massachusetts had been a form of
protest at least since 1774. That summer in the western town of
Great Barrington, 1,500 men shut down the Berkshire County Court in
response to British oppression. Patriot leaders applauded it.
In 1782, the Reverend Samuel Ely, a Yale graduate, raised a mob against
the court in Northampton to protest the new Massachusetts constitution,
which he claimed made a mockery of the Revolution – a constitution,
incidentally, that John Adams drafted with help from James Bowdoin and
former radical Samuel Adams. Two-thirds of western Massachusetts
agreed with Ely, concluding that the “great men” now in power were
costing them more than the lackeys under George III. [14]
4. Private indebtedness was common with backcountry folk in all
states, not just Massachusetts. Ordinarily, it was not a problem.
As Richards points out, these debts were often circular, as one neighbor
might owe labor to another, who in turn might owe cordwood to a third,
who in turn might be indebted to the wife of the first neighbor for her
services as a midwife. Debts were expected to be paid, but without
going to court. [15]
Massachusetts wasn’t the only state to experience a surge in debt
suits. In 1786 creditors in Connecticut took over 20 percent of
the state’s taxpayers to court. Yet there was no comparable
revolt in Connecticut.
The Massachusetts War Debt
It wasn’t debt that triggered Shays’s Rebellion, Richards argues,
but the new state government and “its attempt to enrich the few at the
expense of the many.” [16]
The most glaring instance of this abuse was the decision of
Massachusetts to consolidate its war notes at face value. Even
when issued, the notes traded at about one-fourth par and later declined
to about one-fortieth face value.
Many soldiers were paid in these notes and out of desperation sold them
at about one-tenth their value. Boston speculators swooped up
eighty percent of these notes, and forty percent of them were owned by
just 35 men. Every one of those 35 men had either served in the
state house during the 1780s or had a close relative who did. [17]
Legislators praised the speculators as “worthy patriots” who had
come to the state’s aid in its time of need. But these men did
not buy the notes directly from the government; they bought them from
farmers and soldiers at greatly depreciated prices, who were now being
taxed to redeem them at full value. The speculators, most of whom
had stayed home during the war, would now benefit at the expense of
veterans.
James Bowdoin had run for governor in 1785 in place of the state’s
perennial governor, John Hancock, who had declined to run for reelection
because of gout. Bowdoin held some £3,290 in state notes, and his
supporters were conservative merchants and fellow speculators. The
election was bitter and close and eventually decided in the legislature.
In his inaugural address, Bowdoin pledged to honor the state’s debts
in full with new taxes.
Initially, the legislature tried to collect the taxes with impost and
excise duties, but then added a poll tax and property tax. The
poll tax taxed every family for each male 16 years or older. Poll
and property taxes were going to pay 90 percent of all taxes, while
impost and excise duties would account for the other 10 percent.
Thus, a regressive tax ensured a wealth transfer from farm families with
grown sons to the pockets of Boston speculators.
As Richards observes, “Taxes levied by the state were now much more
oppressive – indeed, many times more oppressive – than those that
had been levied by the British on the eve of the American Revolution.”
[18]
Petitions Ignored
From 1782 - 1786, small communities throughout western Massachusetts had
pleaded with the legislature to address their concerns. Their
petitions had always been polite and deferential, but their meaning was
clear: the rural economy was in bad shape, and the new government was
just making it worse.
In the summer of 1786, the legislature once again ignored their petition
and adjourned. Newspapers in some towns counseled patience, but in
other towns, such as Pelham, the people had had it. In mid-July
Pelham town fathers met and began coordinating with nearby communities
to hold a countywide convention. They decided to find “some
method” of changing the state constitution and thus getting a more
responsive government.
They met on August 22 and set forth 17 grievances, six of which
necessitated a new constitution. They also agreed to break up the
court the following week in Northampton as their method of getting the
legislature to reconvene. [19]
Thus, Shays’ Rebellion began as peaceful petitioning and escalated
into violence only after the state repeatedly ignored the petitions.
Shays’ Regulators
Ten years earlier, the Continental Congress endorsed the declaration
that governments are instituted among men to secure their inalienable
rights, and that whenever any government became destructive of those
ends, it is the right and duty of the people “to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
It was in this light that the rebels saw themselves, Roberts explains.
Their enemies called them dissident debtors, Shaysites, insurgents,
malcontents, and rebels, but from the very beginning they understood
themselves to be Regulators whose purpose was “the suppressing of
tyrannical government in the Massachusetts State.” [20]
“Regulator” in this sense had an honorable history dating back to
England in 1680 and had been used in the Carolina uprisings of the late
1760s. As a Regulation role model, however, the Shays Regulators
drew upon the success story of Vermont in the 1770s. In a dispute
with New York land speculators, Bennington farmers had stopped courts
from sitting and terrorized surveyors sent on behalf of the speculators.
Later, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys established the
independent republic of Vermont. Not surprisingly, the
Massachusetts gentry saw the Vermont leaders as outlaws, while Allen
denounced “’those who held the reins of government in Massachusetts
[as] a pack of Damned Rascals.’” [21]
The Constitution of 1780
The Shays’ Regulators were outraged over the state’s new
constitution and the manner in which it had been ratified. A
meager and partisan convention had approved it without their consent.
In the fall of 1779, 247 towns sent delegates to Boston for a
constitutional convention. John Adams drafted a constitution, then
left for France on a diplomatic mission. Another convention was
scheduled later that winter to approve, disapprove, or modify Adams’
creation. Because of the severity of the winter, only 47 towns
were represented, most within 10 – 15 miles of Boston. Their
decisions on the document became the Constitution of 1780.
In general, it enhanced the power of the rich and well born. Though it
included a bill of rights, white male taxpayers had to be worth at least
£60 to vote, which was £20 more than their colonial charter under the
king. It allowed the house to conduct business when only 60
members were present, favoring those most able to attend during the
winter, the mercantile elite in Boston. It also established an
independent judiciary and a senate, neither of which were answerable to
the people, as well as a clause forbidding any amendments to the
constitution for at least 15 years. [22]
Defenders of the Rebellion
Not all state leaders opposed the Rebellion. Moses Harvey, a
legislator from the small town of Montague, had been a hero in the war
and was now a captain in the local militia. He encouraged his men
to join the rebellion, calling his colleagues in the legislature a band
of “thieves, knaves, robbers, and highwaymen.” [23]
William Whiting, Chief Justice of Berkshire County, had been a
dependable conservative who had received a number of prestigious
appointments and was a scion of a wealthy family. Writing under
the pen name “Gracchus,” in honor of the Gracchus brothers from the
days of the Roman republic, Whiting published a letter accusing the
leadership of enriching themselves at the expense of ordinary farmers.
He also faulted citizens for their “inattention to public affairs for
several years past.” “The people at large,” he said, had an
“indispensable duty to watch and guard their liberties, and to crush
the very first appearances of encroachments upon it.”
On October 20, 1786, the Continental Congress authorized the addition of
1,340 men to its 700-man army because the Massachusetts militia was
unable to suppress the rebellion. Congress decided it would be
foolish to tell the public the real reason for raising additional
troops, so they announced an Indian war was pending in the Ohio Valley.
It gave Boston legislators a good laugh, especially those from western
towns. But the sharpest critic was Baron von Steuben, the Prussian
drillmaster who had trained Washington’s troops. Writing under a false
name, the baron pointed out that Massachusetts had 92,000 militiamen on
its rolls. Theoretically, the militia system excluded the poor and
transient. Members were men of substance with deep roots in the
community. They were men of property. With such a force at
its disposal, why would the Massachusetts government need outside
support?
There was only one plausible reason, von Steuben concluded: the numerous
militias supported the rebels, whereas the present system of
administration had the support of only “a very small number of
respected gentlemen.” If that was the case, how dare Congress support
such an “abominable oligarchy.” [24]
The recruitment effort failed, leading Bowdoin to hire an army without
legislative authority.
A Major Revisionist Work
I believe readers will find Richards’s Shays’s Rebellion
stands with DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln and Kolko’s The
Triumph of Conservatism as a work of outstanding scholarship
exposing the conservative stake in bigger government. Strict
constitutional government has a refreshing appeal in today’s world
because of the Beltway monster we have in its place, but we should bear
in mind the lessons of Richards’s research. The constitutional
movement included the familiar ingredients of plunder, crisis, and lies
to further government growth. The original Constitution was a step
forward for big government.
References
1 “Constitution
Day ushers in mandate to teach the Constitution,” Donna Krache,
CNN
2
“Learn,
Dammit,” Dennis Myers
3 Richards, Leonard L., Shays’s Rebellion: The American
Revolution’s Final Battle, University of Pennsylvania Press,
Philadelphia, 2002
4 Richards, p. 2
5 Richards, p. 130
6 Richards, p. 130
7 Richards, p. 127
8 Cunliffe, Marcus, George Washington: Man and Monument, The New
American Library, New York, NY, 1958, p. 124
9 Rosenfeld, Richard N., American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican
Returns, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York NY, 1998, p. 468
10 Richards, p. 132
11 Richards, p. 55-56
12 Richards, p. 60
13 Richards, p. 54
14 Richards, p. 59-60
15 Richards, p. 61
16 Richards, p. 63
17 Richards, p. 78
18 Richards, p. 88
19 Richards, p. 6-8
20 Richards, p. 63
21 Richards, p. 64-68
22 Richards, p. 72
23 Richards, p. 14
24 Richards, p. 16.
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