Shay’s Rebellion, Now and Then
From Wikipedia, Shay’s Rebellion Seen Now:
Shays' Rebellion was
an armed uprising in Massachusetts,
mostly in and around Springfield during
1786 and 1787. American Revolutionary
War veteran Daniel Shays led four thousand rebels
(called Shaysites) in a protest against perceived economic and civil rights
injustices. Shays was a farmhand from Massachusetts at the beginning of the
Revolutionary War; he joined the Continental Army, saw action at the Battles of
Lexington and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill,
and Battles of Saratoga,
and was eventually wounded in action.
In
1787, Shays' rebels marched on the United States' Armory at Springfield in
an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government. The
federal government found itself unable to finance troops to put down the
rebellion, and it was consequently put down by the Massachusetts State militia
and a privately funded local militia. The widely held view was that the Articles of
Confederation needed to be reformed as the country's governing
document, and the events of the rebellion served as a catalyst for the Constitutional
Convention and the creation of the new government.
The
shock of Shays' Rebellion drew retired General George Washington back into public life,
leading to his two terms as the United States' first President. There is
still debate among scholars concerning the rebellion's influence on the
Constitution and its ratification.
There are two points I’d like to make. One is that it is difficult to assess the
real significance of some events at the time they are happening. This is a commonplace, but it bears frequent
repeating in a world of 24x7 hyperventilating news cycles.
The second point is that even where the historical
ramifications of an event are unknown, contemporary reactions can reveal characters
and tendencies that themselves will take a generation to unfold.
Shay’s Rebellion, Seen Then:
In my gradual reading of “The Adams-Jefferson Letters” and
of the first volume of the “John Quincy Adams Diaries,” we can see an
interesting example of how a latterly historically important event was viewed by
some contemporaries:
John Quincy Adams, then a student at Harvard, made a single
entry in his diary specifically about the rebellion, September 7, 1786: the
Commonwealth is “in a state of considerable fermentation.” He recounts how about 400 men had twice
prevented the Court of Common Pleas from sitting and how the Governor was
working to raise a militia and was calling on the people to support the Constitution. (That would be the state constitution.) John Quincy fears blood will be shed. While he acknowledges some of the rebels’
grievances, he blames the rebels for their idleness and dissipation. He also suggests that such disturbances might
be “highly medicinal” to a Republican Government if properly managed.
John Adams, then the US ambassador to England included in a
November 30, 1786, letter to Thomas Jefferson in France, this seemingly
sanguine paragraph:
Don’t be alarmed at the late
Turbulence in New England. The Massachusetts
Assembly had, in its Zeal to get the better of their Debt, laid on a Tax rather
heavier than the People could bear; but all will be well, and this Commotion
will terminate in additional Strength to Government.”[1]
(However mild he may have conveyed the story in his letter,
the rebellion seemed to spur Adams in finishing a work he had already begun, his
“Defence of the Constitutions of the United States.” This book is thought to have helped prepare
the ground for the work of the convention in Philadelphia in June, 1787.[2]
Abigail Adams, in January, 1787, wrote to Jefferson is stronger
tones, describing “Ignorant, restless desperadoes, without conscience or
principals,” with disparate and contradictory slogans leading mobs to stop the
courts in several counties. She also,
like her husband and son, foresees that this trouble will prove “salutary to the
state at large.”[3]
Interestingly, although the three Adamses differ in the intensity
of their alarm, all three see in the rebellion an opportunity to improve or
strengthen the government. There are
similarities in this optimistic view with the famous statement from Jefferson, “the tree of
liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots &
tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.”[4]
On the one hand, it is natural that all of the Revolutionary
generation would share, to some degree, in this sentiment. They had just fought a long war to free
themselves from the tyranny they saw gripping them from England.
On the other hand, each of the Adams family saw the
Rebellion as regrettable and they stood on the side of orderly government. They felt that through dealing with the
uprising, orderly government and support for it would be strengthened.
Jefferson saw it from another angle. A fuller version of his quote:
the people can not be all, & always, well
informed. the part which is wrong [. . .] will be discontented in proportion to the importance of
the facts they misconceive. if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it
is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13.
states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one
rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever
existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve
it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their
people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to
set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives
lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to
time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.
Here, even if they are mistaken, they should throw off
lethargy and resist. The purpose of
their resistance is to warn the rulers that they “preserve the spirit of resistance.” Afterall, “what signify a few lives lost”?
In an earlier post I wrote about how the historical,
detailed Adams and Jefferson of their letters did not look like the thumbnail
sketches we hold in our minds. But here,
in their respective, contemporary reactions to Shay’s Rebellion, we can begin to
some daylight between them, some significant differences begin to emerge.
[1] “The
Adams-Jefferson Letters,” edited by Lester J. Cappon, Univ. of North Carolina
Press, 1959, p. 156.
[3] Ibid,
p. 168
[4] Jefferson
in a letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787, as quoted on http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/100
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