Farmers under arms close the Northampton court before it can sit
Western Massachusetts had spent two years watching sheriffs seize farms and cattle over unpaid debts while the legislature in Boston, stocked with merchants, refused to issue relief currency. On August 29, 1786, a well-organized armed force that included Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays marched into Northampton and blocked the county court from opening its session, though scholars note Shays's leadership role in this action was likely exaggerated. The protestors called themselves Regulators, echoing a North Carolina movement from the 1760s, and said they wanted only relief from judicial processes stripping them of land and property. The court did not sit that day.
This was armed resistance to civil courts inside the United States, five years after Yorktown, and it kept the Northampton court from sitting. The unrest's spread to other courthouses convinced men like Washington and Madison that the Articles of Confederation could not guarantee order, a fear that pushed reluctant states toward the Philadelphia convention less than a year later.
QWho were the only two Shaysites actually put to death for the rebellion?
John Bly and Charles Rose were hanged on December 6, 1787, despite eighteen men, including Daniel Shays, being convicted and sentenced to death. Most of the eighteen had their convictions overturned on appeal, were pardoned outright, or had their sentences commuted. Shays himself was pardoned in 1788 and returned to Massachusetts from hiding in the Vermont woods, though the Boston press continued to vilify him as a radical long after he came home. Roughly four thousand people had signed confessions admitting participation in exchange for amnesty, and only a few hundred of those were ever indicted at all.
QWhat did Daniel Shays do with the ceremonial sword the Marquis de Lafayette gave him?
In 1780, Lafayette presented Shays with an ornamental sword to honor his military service, an honor shared with several other officers. Shays sold it for cash to help pay off debts, arguing there was nothing wrong with the sale since he already owned another sword. His fellow officers frowned on the decision anyway, seeing it as an insult to the honor. He had gone unpaid for his Continental Army service, and within a few years he was hauled into court over debts he had no way to cover, the same predicament facing thousands of Massachusetts veterans and farmers.
QWhy was Daniel Shays personally chosen to guard a British spy on the eve of his execution?
After British officer John André was captured while conspiring with Benedict Arnold to surrender West Point, George Washington personally selected Shays as one of the captains assigned to guard him during imprisonment. Shays was present at André's execution on October 2, 1780, and was likely the officer who escorted him to the gallows. He resigned from the army just twelve days later, on October 14, 1780, having never been paid in full for his service. That unpaid service is what landed him in court over debts within months of coming home, the uprising that would carry his name broke out six years later.
