 |
On this day in 1787, Daniel Shays, a farmer and veteran of the Revolutionary War, led a ragtag* band of perhaps 1,500 men toward the federal armory at Springfield, Massachusetts. Shays hoped to seize the weapons stored there and then march to Boston, where he and his men would topple the state government.
What became known as Shays’s Rebellion had begun the previous spring, when debt-ridden farmers in western Massachusetts, fearing they would lose their land, thwarted creditors’ lawsuits by closing the courts. Such actions echoed events that had taken place on the road to Independence, especially the popular response to the Coercive Acts of 1774. But this time, Shays and men like him struggled against their compatriots, rather than the British. The Massachusetts farmers believed their fight would determine the legacy of the Revolution.
On January 25th, the Shays rebels faced off with a militia force outside the federal armory. The rebels lost. Badly. Many of them dispersed into the hills. Others were captured and jailed. The State of Massachusetts then mounted a show trial at which four of the insurrection’s leaders were condemned to death, only to be spared at the last moment when Governor James Bowdoin pardoned them.
The Massachusetts farmers, having failed in their effort to topple the state’s government through rebellion, instead turned out hard-money legislators — and Governor Bowdoin — in the next election, replacing them with representatives more sympathetic to the debtor’s plight. Relief followed. The crisis abated.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. Thomas Jefferson, after hearing news of the insurrection, remarked, “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing…It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” Other elites, though, without the benefit of an ocean between themselves and the rebels — Jefferson served in Paris at the time — were less certain of Shays’s salutary impact on the body politic. George Washington, most famously, viewed the rebellion as evidence that The Articles of Confederation had to be amended. Washington, accordingly, came out of retirement to attend the Constitutional Convention that began in Philadelphia the following spring. The rest is history.
Oh wait, there’s one more thing. Approximately four years ago, I was invited to participate in a historians’ forum, sponsored by the History Channel, on important turning points in American history. I, along with fifteen other historians, was locked in a conference room in the bowels of a fancy hotel in New York City for two days. The group spent its time arguing over critical, and, ideally, novel historical watersheds. I had a bunch of whacked-out notions. But when the History Channel finally produced the series 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America, two of my ideas made the cut: the Mystic Massacre and Shays’s Rebellion. The former made for bad television. The latter, though, yielded this film. Which is cool.
* Obligatory use of “ragtag” to describe a band of farmers. Said band, depending on the circumstances and author’s intent, could also be “scrappy.” These are the rules, people. I don’t make ‘em up; I just follow ‘em. Got complaints? Take it up with management. I’m just a monkey with a keyboard.
11 comments
January 25, 2008 at 3:16 pm
teofilo
I’m not so sure the original revolutionaries weren’t rebelling against their compatriots as well.
January 25, 2008 at 3:23 pm
ari
Fair point. But they didn’t see it that way. Something like a proto-nationalist identity*, I think, had begun to emerge across the latter half of the eighteenth century, a process that accelerated as the colonies moved toward the Declaration.
Unless you mean the Loyalists. Then all bets are off.
* With, as ever, notable and important exceptions.
January 25, 2008 at 3:49 pm
teofilo
Fair enough, though I do think the Loyalists are still something of a fly in the ointment of that interpretation. I don’t know as much as I’d like to about the eighteenth century, though. I should probably read more about it.
January 25, 2008 at 3:51 pm
ari
I should probably read more about it.
Probably not. It’s really complicated. For most of the century, there’s no federal government (shudder) to keep things neat and organized. And even after there is, it can’t keep things neat and organized — as my post suggests.
January 25, 2008 at 3:52 pm
ari
But if you do want to read more, Alan Taylor’s American Colonies is the place to start. Big surprise that, I know.
January 25, 2008 at 4:01 pm
eric
Dude, the name of this book is American Colonies.
January 25, 2008 at 4:05 pm
ari
Oh, here it is. You’re right. Fixed.
January 25, 2008 at 11:41 pm
teofilo
For most of the century, there’s no federal government (shudder) to keep things neat and organized.
That’s just the way I likes it. Once there’s a federal government to keep things organized it gets all boring. The seventeenth century is teh awesome.
As it happens, I am actually in the middle of reading American Colonies right now, and am just about to get to the eighteenth century. So, uh, thanks for the validation.
January 26, 2008 at 12:16 am
ari
We’re a full-service blog. Validation is our middle name.
January 27, 2008 at 1:48 am
Hemlock
I commend you and the History Channel for both choices. I read some of those comments on the Mystic Massacre. A couple of viewers speculated about some sorta left-wing conspiracy surrounding that piece. I’m sorry: most U.S. historians and most college-level history survey texts argue that both sides committed atrocities. However, they usually add that each side viewed war, violence, and captivity through different cultural lenses. Same holds true for King Philip’s War, Jamestown encounters, etc. Still–atrocities on both sides remind students of the horrors of colonization and ecological imperialism.
In any case, approximately 600-700 Pequots died in the Mystic Massacre. Most burned to death. The lucky few who escaped were shot dead or decapitated. All in one day. When’s the last time you heard an Indian war party killing 700 Americans in 24 hours? If the History Channel didn’t present a “balanced portrait,” it’s pretty understandable. I don’t think anyone (scholars included) is in any position to criticize the producers. A left-wing takeover of the History Channel? Say what??
February 3, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Surveying « Sunlit Water
[...] introduction to the parts of colonial history that I didn’t know much about (particularly the eighteenth century). I think I might have enjoyed it more if I had read it before some of the other books that [...]