Shays' Rebellion 2/5
Social Sciences
Daniel Shays' Rebellion
Before the revolution, most of these farmers in the western part of Massachusetts farmed just enough for their family or to trade locally in a market. But when the revolution began, the demand for food products increased. So the farmers being clever Yankees, borrowed money, said that they could play it much more of their land than they normally did and began to produce for the market. Thank you. When the revolution ended and farming was restored, the demand for this produce dried up. And then these farmers were in terrible trouble because they still owed their mortgage.
They were left with very sobering alternatives. First of all, they could have their property sold at auction. And they were fearful, of course, if their property was sold, they would have nothing left. They couldn't support their families. Secondly, somebody could come in and simply seize their cows, seize their lands. These are sheep. Whatever. Or third, they could end up in debtors prison. If in fact, a creditor wanted to put a dead or in prison, that creditor could do so. And in Massachusetts at the time, you had several hundred people in debtors prisons.
Some of them dying in debtors prisons. By 1786, debtors made up 80% of the occupants of prisons in hoster, a major western Massachusetts talent, Samuel Eli, a Revolutionary War veteran and a current prisoner, wrote from jail of his condition. I am alive and that is all. I'm full of boils and putrefied sores or over my body and they make me stink alive besides having my feet flows which makes it difficult to walk. Many people felt these problems were proof that the present form of government was not working. A solution had to be found. In the spring of 1786, crowded inside the smoke filled room of conkey's tavern in pelham, Daniel Shay is addressed to crowd a sympathizing who hung onto his every word.
My shays told him that the courts were in cahoots with the eastern creditors, a voice rose up from the crowd. Well, what should be done about it? Close down the courts, then they can't take our property away or throw us in jail. The seeds of rebellion had been planted. All around him, Daniel Shay saw poor farmers like himself, many of whom he had served within the Revolutionary War, now being sent to rot in debtor's prisons. Families were left without providers and mothers were forced to beg in the streets. He had been taken to court for debts twice by different retailers.
So Daniel shays was afraid that he was going to lose his land. He was going to lose his crops, lose his cows and so on. And he couldn't support his family at that point. To lose your farm and to have to work for someone else who was more than just an economic decline, it was a decline in your status in your country. That is, you would no longer be a voter. In order to vote in most colonies and in most states, you had to prove that you own land. This made you an independent man. And here you have an interesting situation of the complete insensitivity, the blindness of a political elite. The political elite that governed Massachusetts were for the most part scented in eastern Massachusetts.
They were oriented towards the sea towards commerce towards business, and indeed there was a wide cultural economic and geographic gap between east and Massachusetts and the western part of the colony. Shays began to meet frequently with its supporters at conkey's tavern inciting them with talk of self-government and rebellion. It had been a tradition for decades and decades maybe centuries to have demonstrations by the people when they felt that there was some economic inequity or some invasion of people's rights as citizens by people in power. Shays's rebellion in a sense comes out of that tradition. Shays had convinced his fellow farmers that something had to change.
During the summer of 1786, all over western Massachusetts, conventions were held to determine a list of demands that were to be delivered to state government leaders in Boston. Because Boston was both the center of industry and also the major port, a state government was largely composed of wealthy lawyers, merchants and property owners. The eastern establishment turned a deaf ear. There were protests, the rebellion that erupts in 1786 and 87 did not come as a great surprise. They had been lots of little bits of evidence and suggestions that the people in the west were unhappy, but the eastern establishment ignored that. And they went ahead. With their program of taxation, that is taxation to raise the money to pay the state debt and to make the necessary contributions to national government. In the meantime, ignoring this rise in chorus that was coming up from the more rural areas of Massachusetts.
As a prominent figure in the eastern establishment, Samuel Adams had vowed to stay out of politics after the revolution, but the temptation was too much, and eventually ran for state Senate. He won. And was soon elected Senate president, one of his first acts was to call for an end to the county convention. County conventions are not only useless but dangerous. They served an excellent purpose and were highly necessary when they were set up. But no more. The irony of Samuel Adams's career after the American Revolution is that the very techniques that he pioneered, the very strategies that he developed, the very tactics that he employed.
When now I'm going to be used by one might almost say his students. His students being now a farmers in western and central Massachusetts. They began to organize in meetings of protests and county conventions in town meetings in all kinds of activities that merit exactly what Samuel Adams had been doing in the 1770s. The difference now is that Samuel Adams, the great agitator of the 1770s, the great organizer of resistance. Now in the 1780s, looks upon these people in resistance and is horrified.
Absolutely horrifying. It can never be the duty of one man to be concerned in more than one revolution. But Daniel shades in the farmers of western Massachusetts didn't agree. They were indeed concerning themselves with a second rebellion. They had tried the way of conventions. Petitions and letters to their elected leaders. They had tried to seek justice legally, and they had been ignored. They viewed lawyers and they viewed judges in the same way as they viewed the eastern politicians.
These were men out to suck their blood. Chase still had no way to pay his debts to the businessmen of eastern Massachusetts and was faced with a threat of imprisonment, crushing poverty and the loss of his farm. To feed his family he had been forced to sell his most cherished belonging. The sword he had received for the Marquis de Lafayette. Fortunately, Daniel Shay is still had one sword left. The cutlass he had carried in the battle of bunker hill. And now he sharpened it again and preparation for a new battle. In the late fall of 1786, Daniel shays began to muster and train an army.
Among them were many of the men he had fought with in the revolution. The Massachusetts veterans of the revolution who joined shays rebellion put the hemlock in their hat when they went off to war to fight against British tyranny. I mean, it was symbolic. This is the new tyranny. That they're fighting against. The poor and oppressed of Massachusetts had desperately needed a leader. Now they had one. Daniel chase.