Subject: Shay's Rebellion, The Real History Not
Taught In Schools
From:
jackservant@msn.com To:
georgia_independence@yahoo.com Date:
Wed, 9 Nov 2005
Shays
Fought the Revolution's Final Battle, and We Lost Shay’s Rebellion by George F. Smith gfs543@bellsouth.net
Leonard L. Richards, a history professor at UMass–Amherst, has written a groundbreaking book about
Shays’ Rebellion, the event that sparked
the Constitutional Convention. Leonard
L. Richard portrays the Shaysites as Regulators in the spirit of the Revolution fighting a
plundering corrupt 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 rebellion ended in the rout at Petersham, “Shays’s Rebellion” has lasted to this day as a
propaganda tool for state power.
Recruiting Washington:
As soon
as the Revolution ended, the liars and murderers came out of their snake pits in government offices
across the country. These were not the
brave men who fought for freedom.
They were weasels who had managed
to insinuate themselves into government
offices as Presidential advisors, politicians and bureaucrats.
Government-friendly versions of the rebellion 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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October 17, 2005 discuss this column in the forum George F. Smith is a freelance writer and
screenwriter. Visit his website at www.libertyasylum.com George F. Smith Archive
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