Daniel shays rebellion facts

The army was led by former Continental Army General Benjamin Lincoln and funded by private merchants. Lincoln's forces anticipated that the Regulators would storm the federal armory at Springfield, Massachusetts, and were waiting when Shays approached the armory with approximately 1, men on January 25, The army fired warning shots followed by artillery fire, killing four of the insurgents and wounding twenty.

Daniel shays rebellion facts

The rebel force quickly faltered and scattered into the countryside. Many participants were later captured and most men, including Shays, eventually received amnesty as part of a general pardon. Washington replied to Knox that "On the prospect of the happy termination of this insurrection 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.

Shays' Rebellion accelerated daniels shays rebellion facts to reform the Articles, eventually resulting in the Philadelphia Convention of The Convention elected Washington as its president and ultimately produced the Constitution of the United States. Notes: 1. Inthe protesters marched on the federal Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government.

The federal government, severely limited in its prerogatives under the Articles of Confederationfound itself unable to finance troops to put down the rebellion; it was consequently put down by the Massachusetts State Militia under William Shepardalongside a privately funded local militia led by former Continental Army officer Benjamin Lincoln.

The widely-held view had already developed that the Articles of Confederation were untenable and needed amending, with the events of the rebellion serving as further evidence for the later Constitutional Convention. There is continuing debate among scholars as to what extent the rebellion influenced the later drafting and ratification of the Constitution.

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.

When the Revolutionary War ended inMassachusetts merchants' European business partners refused to extend lines of credit to them and insisted that they pay for goods with hard currencydespite 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.

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. I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war, been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, Continental rates, and all rates The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers.

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. InDaniel 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.

One early protest against the government was led by Job Shattuck of Groton, Massachusettsinwho organized residents to physically prevent tax collectors from doing their work. Governor Hancock ordered the sheriff to suppress these actions. Most rural communities attempted to use the legislative process to gain relief. Petitions and proposals were repeatedly submitted to the state legislature to issue paper currency, which would depreciate the currency and make it possible to pay a high-value debt with lower-valued paper.

The merchants, including James Bowdoinwere opposed to the idea since they stood to lose from such measures, and the proposals were repeatedly rejected. Governor Hancock resigned in early citing health reasons, though some suggested that he was anticipating trouble. He stepped up civil actions to collect back taxes, and the legislature exacerbated the situation by levying an additional property tax to raise funds for the state's portion of foreign debt payments.

Protests in rural Massachusetts turned into direct daniel shays rebellion facts in August after the state legislature adjourned without considering the many petitions that had been sent to Boston. They called themselves Regulatorsa reference to the Regulator movement of North Carolina, which sought to reform corrupt practices in the late s.

Governor Bowdoin issued a proclamation on September 2 denouncing such mob action, but he took no military measures beyond planning a militia response to future actions. Daniel Shays had participated in the Northampton action and began to take a more active role in the uprising in November, though he firmly denied that he was one of its leaders.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts indicted 11 leaders of the rebellion as "disorderly, riotous, and seditious persons". Shays and Day were able to recruit a similar number but chose only to demonstrate, exercising their troops outside of Shepard's lines rather than attempting to seize the building. Shepard withdrew his force which had grown to around men to the Springfield Armorywhich was rumored to be the target of the protestors.

Protests were also successful in shutting down courts in Great BarringtonConcordand Tauntonin September and October. Samuel Adams claimed that foreigners "British emissaries" were instigating treason among citizens. Adams helped draw up a Riot Act and a resolution suspending habeas corpus so the authorities could legally keep people in jail without trial.

Adams proposed a new legal distinction that rebellion in a republic should be punished by death. Warrants were issued for the arrest of several of the protest ringleaders, and a posse of around men rode to Groton on November 28 to arrest Job Shattuck and other rebel leaders in the area. Shattuck was chased down and arrested on the 30th and was wounded by a sword slash in the process.

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,Governor Bowdoin proposed creating a privately funded militia army. While the government forces assembled, Shays, 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. 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.

A third force under Eli Parsons was situated to the north at Chicopee. 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. Shepard first ordered warning shots fired over the heads of Shays's 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 [ 48 ] with most of the rebel forces fleeing north. Shays's and Day's men eventually regrouped at Amherst, Massachusetts. General Lincoln immediately began marching west from Worcester with the 3, 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 on February 2, around 20 miles 32 km from Petersham. They surprised the rebel camp so thoroughly that the rebels scattered "without time to call in their out parties or even their guards".

Most of the leadership escaped north into New Hampshire and Vermontwhere they were sheltered despite repeated demands that they be returned to Massachusetts for trial. 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. Some rebel leaders sought assistance from Lord Dorchesterthe British governor of the Province of Quebec who reportedly promised assistance in the form of Mohawk warriors led by Joseph Brant.

The bills also authorized state payments to reimburse Lincoln and the merchants who had funded the army and authorized the recruitment of additional militia. This bill forbade any acknowledged rebels from holding a variety of elected and appointed offices. 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.

They raided the shops of merchants and the homes of merchants and local professionals, establishing an operational headquarters at Bingham's Tavern. This came to the attention of Brigadier John Ashley, who mustered a force of around 80 men and caught up daniel shays rebellion facts the rebels in nearby Sheffield late in the day for the bloodiest encounter of the rebellion: 30 rebels were wounded one mortallyat least one government soldier was killed, and many were wounded.

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. Under the Articles, the federal government had extremely limited powers.

This made sense to its drafters, who were, at that moment fighting a war to separate themselves from a powerful central government in London that they saw as tyrannical. Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government could not impose taxes on the people directly; it could only to request money from the state governments, which held the power to tax their citizens.

Each state was also responsible for paying its own portion of the massive debt that had been accumulated to fund the war effort against Britain. To pay its creditors, merchants in Massachusetts convinced their state government to raise taxes. Among the hardest hit by these new high taxes were farmers in the western part of the state. These farmers had little hard currency on hand, and often relied on barter and credit to obtain goods and services.

In addition, many of these farmers were veterans of the Revolutionary War. Throughout the war, these veterans received less than their full amount of earned pay for their service, sometimes receiving no pay at all. Pensions were only provided to men who had been disabled by wounds, and to the widows of soldiers who had been killed. An unstable monetary system made day-to-day life more difficult for many than it had been before independence.

Most of the insurgents later took advantage of a general amnesty and surrendered. Shays and a few other leaders escaped north to Vermont. Shays moved to New York where he died, impoverished, on September 29, Content for this article has been compiled and edited by American History Central Staff.