Daniel Shays was nothing before the war, a landless laborer on someone else's farm.
So when in April 1775, 700 British troops set out from Boston for supplies stashed by the Colonial militia in Lexington and Concord, precipitating the famous midnight ride by Paul Revere (and the less famous rides by William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott), it constituted a lucky break for Shays. Colonial society was perhaps not as rigid as what the colonists had left behind in Europe, but it was still hard for a poor boy, the son of Irish immigrants, to get ahead.
One way, as anyone who has seen "Hamilton" knows, was by distinguished service on a battlefield. What was war good for? Well, if it didn't kill you, it could make you a personage.
So Shays answered the Lexington alarm. For 11 days he harassed the British as they beat it back toward Boston. He received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Massachusetts militia in May; he was there when Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys (with the help of Benedict Arnold) took Fort Ticonderoga. He fought at Bunker Hill and Saratoga. He became a captain in January 1977.
Wounded, Shays was singled out for recognition by the Marquis De Lafayette, who presented him with an ornamental sword as a token of his personal esteem. But Shays, like many officers who served the revolutionary cause, had only been paid fitfully over his five years of service. He had a wife and family. He could no longer afford to serve.
So he resigned his commission and pawned Lafayette's sword, using the proceeds to secure 251 acres of rocky farmland in Pelham, Mass. He could no longer keep up appearances as an officer and a gentleman; he had to go to work as a dirt farmer.
He couldn't make it work. By 1785, he was in debt to 10 different lenders. In 1786, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts prepared to sue him for unpaid taxes.
Shays was hardly alone. In 1782, farmers had protested against Massachusetts' tax policy, which required them to pay in hard currency, not paper scrip or goods. Since the farmers of Massachusetts didn't have access to this hard currency--generally their only assets were their land, crops and tools--they had a difficult time paying these taxes.
Similarly, their merchant creditors could also demand payment in hard currency. They were defaulting on loans and having their properties foreclosed upon.
In August 1786, when the court of general sessions was scheduled to open in Hampshire County, the judges were prevented from entering the courthouse by a crowd of several hundred men led by former Revolutionary war captains Joseph Hines and Joel Billings, along with Deacon John Thompson.
The next week, the court in Worcester was similarly disrupted. In September, the Middlesex County court was prevented from opening.
Later that month, when the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts tried to open its session in Springfield, it did so under the protection of the Hampshire County militia led by Gen. William Shepard. He stationed 120 of his men in the courthouse; about 1,000 more spread out over the grounds.
They were outnumbered by the Regulators--farmers who marched on the court with twigs of hemlock in their hats, led by Capt. Daniel Shays.
Seeing he had the advantage, Shays' most immediate concern was to keep his men from overrunning the government troops. (It was not without some difficulty that he managed this; some of the men had prepared for battle.)
Then he sent his demand through the cordon that the court hear no civil cases unless both sides were willing. Shepard rejected the demand, but Shays' men had effectively blockaded the courthouse, preventing all prospective jurors from entering.
Without juries, the court had no reason to carry on. With the court adjourned, Shepard had nothing to protect. He dismissed the militia.
Massachusetts Gov. James Bowdoin called the legislature into special session a few days later; they passed three laws aimed at easing the burdens of the people, especially for making real and personal property tender in discharge of debts. They also reduced court costs. It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't enough.
Worcester County court tried to reopen in late November; the Shaysites closed them down again.
That's when the government got serious. Bowdoin mobilized a force of 1,200 militiamen, led by former Continental Army Gen. Benjamin Lincoln and funded by private merchants, to go after Shays and his Regulators. Lincoln's forces learned the Regulators planned to storm the federal armory at Springfield, Mass.
On Jan. 25, 1787, Shays and some 1,500 men approached the armory. Lincoln's troops fired warning shots followed by artillery fire, killing four of the insurgents and wounding 20. The Regulators evaporated into the woods; many were later captured. Shays went into hiding in Vermont.
Most of the Regulators who were rounded up were summarily pardoned. Shays and 17 other "ringleaders" were convicted of treason. Two of them, John Bly and Charles Rose, were hanged.
Shays and the others were pardoned after about a year; Shays returned home from Vermont, and was granted a pension for the five years he served in the Continental Army.
But the Boston newspapers never let anyone forget he was a traitor. Shays worked his plot and drank. He'd live bitter and broken--the country's first insurrectionist.
You and I might have some sympathy for Shays, but John Quincy Adams did not. He saw him as one of the "malcontents [who] must look to themselves, to their idleness, to their dissipation, and extravagances." (They bought goods on credit, he reasoned, so they ought to have to live by the terms agreed upon.) They caused George Washington to wonder if men, "when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government."
Leave it to Thomas Jefferson to have the hottest take: "I like a little Rebellion now and then. It's like a storm in the atmosphere," he wrote to Abigail Adams. Jefferson argued that the rebels should be pardoned, and that they served an important function. "[W]hat country can preserve its liberty if the rulers are not warned from time to time [by] ... the spirit of resistance."
Then he famously declared: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
That infamous line is sometimes spouted by fatuous people upset that they didn't get their way in some civic dispute or other, but its having been co-opted by idiots and boors and QAnon shamans doesn't undermine its essential truth.
Governments are not divinely ordained; they are works by a committee, and they stand for only so long as they serve their constituencies. The governed consents to be governed.
Until they don't.
pmartin@adgnewsroom.com