It was very exciting to read about the recent discovery of archival records that shed new light on Shays’ Rebellion [“Unearthing history: State archivists uncover rare 18th century jail records in Northampton,” Gazette, Nov. 15]. This gives us an opportunity to revisit a critical and often misunderstood chapter of American history that happened right in our backyard. We cannot appreciate the ideals of the American Revolution — the Spirit of ’76 — or our constitutional form of government that emerged from it, without this missing link. We need to address three questions to make sense of a series of events that has puzzled historians for generations: who were the rebels, why were they angry, and what did they do about it?
My research tells me that the backbone of the Regulation, as they preferred to call it, was made up of inland Massachusetts “yeomen farmers”: men who owned the land they worked to support their families. They had achieved “independent competency,” which meant they did not have to tip their hats to any landlords, and they were not rich, but they had enough. They actively participated in developing and then running their small towns “by consent.” Their towns and churches operated autonomously, largely free of centralized control. And they overwhelmingly supported the American Revolution in a colony that was almost evenly divided between Patriots and Loyalists. These were the volunteers who won the spectacular victory at Saratoga that turned the tide of the war. They fought in defense of “home rule,” or the right to manage their own affairs responsibly with minimal outside interference.
These farmers and tradesmen were soon angered by policies that emerged out of the new post-war state government in Boston. The rebellious colonies could not pay for a war against Britain in real time so they issued notes, called Continentals, used to pay regular soldiers and suppliers. By war’s end these notes were almost worthless but the people who held them were desperate and unloaded them onto eager speculators for pennies on the dollar. Those speculators took control of state government and called for the redemption of the notes they now held at full face value, generating windfall profits for a handful of connected men in and around Boston. State leaders then put the burden of funding this policy on farmers, raising their taxes six-fold in the midst of a post-war recession.
Farmers expressed their grievances at Town Meetings and with their elected representatives in the state Legislature. The problem was that under the new state constitution bills had to get past the State Senate and the governor’s veto where farmers had no say because they did not meet the property requirements needed to participate in electing these officials. This was by design, John Adams formulated a state government that “balanced” the interests of wealthy elites and the mass of working people. The Massachusetts Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution that was modeled on it, were both overwhelmingly rejected by western Massachusetts voters as insufficiently democratic.
Despite these setbacks, farmers were still committed to using the democratic process to resolve their grievances. They convened a series of County Conventions held in western towns where shared grievances were discussed and assembled and “instructions” were passed on to elected officials, much like the Committees of Correspondence used 10 years earlier, to no avail.
In the meantime, the state’s use of the court system was ratchetting up discontent among western farmers. One in three Hampshire County men were involved in debt litigation suits in the years running up to Shays’ Rebellion. Taxes were due in scarce hard currency, which often pushed farmers into asymmetrical transactions with “moneyed men.” These cases were always cumbersome and expensive and sometimes resulted in incarceration.
Then, on Aug. 29, 1786, a large crowd from around the county gathered downtown and forcibly closed the Northampton Courthouse. Three justices in black robes with grey wigs were marched out of the building and the debtors’ jail was emptied. This was followed by similar actions across the state, all nearly identical to protests directed against the Royal Governor’s courts in 1774. The Hampshire Gazette printed its first issue in September 1786 in direct response to events at the courthouse. The highly partisan newspaper openly vilified the Regulators in its pages, effectively rubbing salt into an open wound.
My research indicates that the court closure that day was not a violent affair. Many in the crowd were young men from well-established local families. When the political process failed to produce results, they turned to “direct action,” a show of force to be sure, but also a form of political theater designed to enhance their bargaining position with Boston. They used the same playbook that had worked so well against British oppression a decade earlier.
If this is true, then the state vastly overreacted to what was actually happening on the ground. After years of ignoring farmers’ grievances, they responded to the courthouse closings by raising a private subscription army, paid for by the wealthy speculators at the head of government, to squash the western rebellion. This prompted Daniel Shays and others to preemptively take control of the Springfield Arsenal before that army arrived from Boston. The events of that fall and winter also prompted George Washington to come out of retirement and preside over the Constitutional Convention held the following summer. Five years later President Washington invoked his new constitutional powers to raise a federal militia used to squash the so-called Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
The country as a whole quickly moved on from the events of the 1780s, scarcely if ever glancing back at what some historians call the last chapter of the American Revolution. What better time to get a clear picture of how we got to where we are now, before considering where to go next.
Tom Goldscheider of Florence has a masters degree in history from UMass Amherst. His article “Shays’ Rebellion: Reclaiming the Revolution” was published in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts in 2015 and he has given talks about Shays’ Rebellion across western Massachusetts. More information about his work can be found online at tomgoldscheider.net.