Shays’s Rebellion and Congress 1786-87

Shays’s Rebellion and Congress 1786-87

Until the 19th century every state still had laws that imprisoned people for debt. Creditors had most of the coined money (specie), and they demanded coins from debtors. More than half of the people incarcerated were debtors, and prison conditions were wretched. The Rhode Island legislature had large quantities of paper money printed so that they could pay off their debts with depreciated money. The rich classes resented this and insisted that debts be paid promptly even though that forced the
sale of people’s remaining assets.
Many debtors waited until paper money issued by states had depreciated. Virginia received £275,554 in paper money worth only £15,044 sterling, and Maryland collected £144,474 in currency valued at £86,744 sterling. As had happened a generation before, the end of a war was followed by difficult economic conditions. Wages in urban areas fell from an index of 23 in 1785 to 17 in 1789. The credit bubble burst, and many more Americans became unemployed than ever before. Efforts were made to redistribute the wealth of Loyalists; but this was difficult and was opposed by conservatives. Five state constitutions authorized state funding for public education, but none of them had the money to do so.
Massachusetts was one of the states that refused to issue paper money. Farmers in western Massachusetts complained in county conventions about having to pay taxes with hard money, and facing foreclosures they petitioned the Great and General Court of the state which obliviously imposed a stamp tax with duties on bonds, notes, deeds, writs, newspapers, etc. Western and southern counties of Massachusetts had been meeting in conventions since early 1784 to discuss relief from debts and state taxes. In two years the Hampshire County court had prosecuted 2,977 cases of debt, and in 1785-86 Worcester County filed 4,000 suits for debt. Forty-one towns in that county joined in a petition calling for a convention to write a new constitution to relieve debtors and reform the financial system. On August 22, 1786 delegates from fifty towns met at Hatfield in Hampshire County and listed 25 proposals for relieving debtors. On the 29th at Northampton armed men stopped the court from sitting. Farmers in Worcester vowed not to let courts function, and on September 5 several hundred armed men blocked Judge Artemas Ward from entering the court. One week later at Great Barrington in Berkshire County about 800 farmers abandoned the militia to join the rebels and stop the Court of Common Pleas from meeting. Then they freed all the debtors from prison.
The commissioners from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia met at Annapolis for only four days in September before deciding they were too few to act. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina sent commissioners, but they arrived too late. The other four states did not appoint delegates. Hamilton and Madison persuaded the Annapolis convention to suggest “a general meeting of the States in a future Convention” at Philadelphia on May 14, 1787, and Hamilton drafted their report which was presented to Congress by the Convention chairman John Dickinson on September 20.
In Newport, Rhode Island the butcher John Weeden had refused to accept paper money from John Trevett for meat. In September 1786 the defense lawyer, General James Varnum, argued in Trevett v. Weeden that his client had a right to a jury trial and an appeal. The judges in the case found that the state law on paper currency violated the state constitution and was thus invalid. In the next election only one of the superior court judges was re-elected, but the case became a precedent for judicial review.
Crowds calling themselves Regulators marched on courthouses to stop hundreds of foreclosures in Massachusetts. Job Shattuck led the rebels who stopped the Concord court from meeting. The veteran army captain Daniel Shays organized 700 armed volunteers and closed down the state’s supreme court at Worcester. He negotiated with General Shepard, and the state militia withdrew, leaving Shays’ irregulars in control. The Great and General Court met at Boston and made concessions, but a county convention in Worcester judged them inadequate. Secretary of War Knox investigated and reported to Congress that the rebels numbered between 12,000 and 15,000, and he believed they wanted to distribute all property. The turmoil spread to rural parts of five other states, and Shays’s Rebellion caused the Congress to raise a special body of troops and provide a fund by authorizing a loan of $500,000 on October 20 to increase the national army of 700 by 1,340 soldiers; 660 were to come from Massachusetts. In late November the Court of General Sessions was unable to meet at Worcester, and Col. Greenleaf ordered the crowd to disperse. They refused, and the judges went back to Boston.
On January 4, 1787 Governor James Bowdoin called out 4,400 troops without consulting the legislature, and he asked businessmen in Boston to contribute to his goal of £6,000. The banker William Phillips gave £300, and Bowdoin himself subscribed £250. General Benjamin Lincoln led the militia. Shays’ forces needed gunpowder, and they attacked the Worcester garrison on January 25. Four farmers were shot, and the others fled. Lincoln’s force arrived the next day and camped on the snowy hills near Pelham. Shays led his men to Petersham, and on February 4 Lincoln’s vanguard attacked the town. Many Regulators retreated to Vermont as Lincoln’s cavalry captured several hundred men. Eli Parsons tried to raise soldiers in Vermont on February 13, but Ethan Allen declined to lead them. The rebels also appealed to Canada’s Governor Dorchester, but the British foreign office vetoed the project. On February 16 the Massachusetts legislature barred rebels from voting, serving as jurors, or holding office for three years.
In late February a contingent of about ninety Regulators led by Captain Perez Hamlin marched from New York state to Stockbridge and then took supplies and 32 prisoners toward Sheffield. Col. John Ashley was the largest landowner there, and he led eighty men who routed Hamlin’s men and took 150 prisoners in the last major battle of the rebellion on February 27. In Springfield the state militia attacked the insurgents, killing two and wounding thirty as the others fled out of state again.
Jefferson wrote to an aghast Madison that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.” Washington was concerned and recommended amending the constitution. The liberal John Hancock had been governor of Massachusetts from 1780 to 1785, and in the next election he defeated the conservative Governor Bowdoin. Hancock then implemented reforms, reducing court fees and enacting no taxes in 1787, and he pardoned the captured rebels. However, Massachusetts still refused to issue paper money or revise its 1780 constitution.
In early January 1787 John Adams published his pamphlet, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. He argued for a strong executive to keep the legislature from dominating the government, but he still believed the legislative branch should be sovereign over the executive. He cited the ancient Cicero as well as Montesquieu for the wisdom of having three branches of government. He warned against having a unicameral legislature lest just one house become tyrannical in making laws. Of the thirteen states only Pennsylvania and Georgia did not have a bicameral legislature.
On January 16 Jefferson wrote in a letter from Paris to Edward Carrington that he believed that people having correct opinions is so important that given the choice between having only a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he would choose the latter, assuming that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.
Hamilton lobbied for a more demanding tax system, and he advocated a strong central government. In 1787 he was elected to the New York legislature, and he fought for the supremacy of the peace treaty to protect the Tories. New York passed laws to end entailing and feudal privileges.
After November 3 until January 17, 1787 Congress could not meet until seven states were represented. They were unable to elect a president until February 2 when they chose Arthur St. Clair. On February 21 the grand committee on the Annapolis recommendations agreed with them on assembling a convention in Philadelphia in May to make the federal government adequate for the needs of the nation. Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts passed similar resolutions. In April the Congress sent out a letter by Jay to the states calling on them to comply with the peace treaty as the law of the land. Congress was not able to meet between May 11 and July 4.
In April 1787 James Madison wrote “Vices of the Political System of the United States” on the following problems of the Confederation:

1) failure of states to comply with requisitions,
2) states encroaching on federal authority,
3) states violating treaties and international law,
4) states trespassing on each other’s rights,
5) lack of cooperation for common interests,
6) inability to stop internal violence,
7) the Confederation’s inability to enforce laws,
8) people did not ratify the Articles of Confederation,
9) too many different laws in the states,
10) too many changes in state laws, and
11) unjust state laws.

By 1787 the United States had liquidated about $28 million of its debt, and in May the foreign debt to France, Spain, and Holland was estimated to be $10,271,561. Most states after the war had debts of more than one million pounds, and the debts of Pennsylvania and Virginia were over four million. Between 1780 and 1786 Massachusetts collected nearly £1,900,000 in direct taxes.
Seven states were present to pass the Northwest Ordinance on July 13. The Northwest was to have no more than five states. Congress appointed a governor, secretary, and three judges for each territory. When they had at least 5,000 male inhabitants, they could elect their own legislature; but the governor could still veto legislation. The number of inhabitants for a new state was set at one-thirteenth of the United States population which came to 60,000 people. Jefferson’s proposal to ban slavery was included but without the limitation of “after the year 1800.” Southerners voted for it because they wanted to avoid competition in tobacco and indigo from the northwest; also a provision for the recovery of fugitive slaves was included. The Northwest Ordinance included the protection of civil liberties and public support for schools. Article III promised Indians that

their lands and property shall never be taken
from them without their consent;
and, in their property, rights, and liberty,
they never shall be invaded and disturbed,
unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress.

The current laws and customs of French and Canadian inhabitants of the Illinois territory were preserved. On October 5 St. Clair was appointed governor and Winthrop Sargent secretary. A contract was made on October 27 so that the government could get revenue from land sales by the Ohio Company that had been formed in Boston in March 1786 by three generals and the multi-talented Rev. Manasseh Cutler. They managed to buy 1.7 million acres for 8 cents an acre.
Congress lacked a quorum from August 3 to September 20, the day of the report by the Philadelphia Convention. Eleven states were represented to receive the proposed Constitution, two resolutions, and a letter from its president Washington. Eight days later the Congress unanimously resolved to transmit the documents to the state legislatures so that they could be submitted to state conventions. The old government lacked money and could hardly function.


Reformers such as Dr. Benjamin Rush and William Bradford worked to make punishments less cruel and to improve prison conditions. Rush was influenced by the writings of John Howard and Cesare Beccaria on prison reform, and on March 9 1787 at Franklin’s home he read his Enquiry into the Effects of Public Punishments upon Criminals and upon Society in which he advocated solitary confinement rather than public mutilation. Rush also campaigned against capital punishment, and Pennsylvania limited the death penalty to first-degree murder. Rush, Jefferson, and the Pennsylvania Council of Censors in 1784 advocated comprehensive education as essential in a republic. On July 28, 1787 Rush gave an address at the Young Ladies’ Academy in Philadelphia that he published as “Thoughts upon Female Education.” On October 29 Rush published his essay, “Plan of a Federal University.”
In 1787 Elizabeth Cornell Bayard in North Carolina tried to recover property taken away because her father had remained loyal to Britain during the Revolution. Spyers Singleton had purchased the property. In Bayard v. Singleton the three judges on the court delayed the case, and in November the legislature investigated their refusal to dismiss the case. The General Assembly decided that the court had a right to hear the case. The court ruled against Bayard but decided that a law passed in 1785 that allowed courts to dismiss such cases was unconstitutional because it denied the plaintiff a jury trial. This set a precedent for the judicial review of laws that violate the constitution of a state.
Germans and other ethnic groups had societies to help immigrants and each other. Literary, humane, and scientific societies met in large cities such as Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and Boston. A group of intellectuals called the “Wits of Connecticut” were led by the painter John Trumbull and the writer Timothy Dwight. During the chaos Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, David Humphreys, and Dr. Lemuel Hopkins published in the New Haven Gazette from October 1786 to September 1787 excerpts from Barlow’s The Anarchiad that satirized the dangers of anarchy. Jedidiah Morse pioneered geography, publishing Geography Made Easy in 1784 and in 1789 The American Geography, which included cultural information. While Dwight preached about Calvinist sins, Joel Barlow was more concerned with social injustice and became a Republican. Barlow wrote the epic poem, The Vision of Columbus, in 1787. His preface declared that the purpose of his poem

is to inculcate the love of national liberty, and
to discountenance the deleterious passion for violence and war;
to show that on the basis of republican principle
all good morals, as well as good government
and hopes of permanent peace, must be founded.²

On April 16, 1787 The Contrast by Royall Tyler was performed by a professional company of actors at the John Street Theater in New York City. This is the earliest known professional production of a play in America, and it also was performed in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, Charleston, and Boston. The comedy presents a New England Yankee called Col. Manley the Hero, who is contrasted to the foreign affectations. Tyler’s other plays include the farce The Island of Barrataria based on Don Quixote, and the religious dramas written in blank verse, The Origin of the Feast of Purim, Joseph and His Brethren, and The Judgment of Solomon. Tyler was also a lawyer in Vermont, and his novel The Algerine Captive about religious freedom was published in 1797 and became only the second American novel to be published in England. During the Revolutionary War he served as General Benjamin Lincoln’s aide-de-camp, and as a major he fought against Shays’s rebellion in Massachusetts. Tyler became chief justice of Vermont’s Supreme Court in 1807 and taught law at the University of Vermont.
Like most of the Connecticut intellectuals, Noah Webster (1758-1843) studied at Yale. He became expert on American English and published his first speller in 1783, followed by a grammar in 1784, and a reader in 1785. That year his Sketches of American Policy argued that representative democracy is the best form of government. In 1787 he founded The American Magazine in New York. In the spring of that year Webster published an essay defending those who held the national debt, and in the fall he wrote a pamphlet in favor of the new Constitution. He was concerned that the Congress did not have the power to enact copyright laws, and he complained about “so many public invasions of private property—so many wanton abuses of legislative powers!”³ In 1793 Hamilton loaned Webster $1,500 so that he could move to New York and edit the newspaper of the Federalist Party. Webster’s speller was used widely and had 385 editions during his long life, selling fifteen million copies by 1828, the year he published his first dictionary.