Shays’ Rebellion Series

On February 26, 1782, a mob of three hundred yeomen tried to obstruct the proceedings of the Court of Common Pleas in Pittsfield. In 1783, tax collectors were attacked by angry yeomen as they passed through Worcester County.

The people who became involved in rebellious activity against Massachusetts in the 1780s were mainly yeoman farmers, craftsmen, and laborers from the central and western counties and the inland rural areas of Massachusetts. All had suffered from high taxes and hard times. Quite a few were veterans.

Taverns provided a means of communication. They had played a vital role in the organization of the American Revolution, and they continued to be one of the few places where people could gather and socialize. In Pelham, where Daniel Shays lived, Conkey Tavern provided a comfortable place for men to meet, get information, and discuss their problems.

Alarmed by the widespread obstruction of justice, Governor Bowdoin of Massachusetts tried to get the local militias to put down these mobs. But too many of the western militiamen sided with the rebels. They refused to act against them. All across Massachusetts, militiamen deserted the militia rather than act against their countrymen. In fact, many militiamen deserted their posts to join the rapidly growing rebel movement, which was becoming a militia itself.

In 1784, Daniel Shays, a farmer, was taken to court over a twelve-pound debt. Shays had become a member of a fraternal order know as the Freemasons while serving in the Revolutionary War in New York. His bravery so impressed the Marquis de Lafayette, a French general who had joined the American fight against England that the general later presented Shays with a ceremonial sword.

Shays helped lead the Regulators in their occupation of the Springfield courthouse in September 1786. A group of eleven hundred Regulators banded together in Springfield to obstruct the Supreme Judicial Court. Some of the Regulators had armed themselves with clubs.