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Shays, Daniel
Born: ca. 1747 Died: 1825
Occupation: American revolutionary, insurgent
From: American Social Leaders and Activists, American Biographies.
Daniel Shays was a soldier in the American Revolution and an insurgent in the 1780s. He
was born in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, in about the year 1747 to Patrick Shays and
Margaret Dempsey Shays.
Little is known about Daniel Shays prior to the American Revolution. In 1772 he married
Abigail Gilbert, and when the Revolution began he rallied to the Patriot cause, fighting both
at Lexington and at Bunker Hill. He saw action at Ticonderoga, Saratoga, and Stony Point,
and in January 1777 he was commissioned a captain in the Fifth Massachusetts Regiment.
He resigned from the army in 1780 and settled in Pelham, Massachusetts, where he served
on the revolutionary Committee of Safety.
In the 1780s Shays's Rebellion began in an atmosphere of widespread economic distress
and intense instability. With a postwar depression gripping the country, farmers suffered
from falling prices for their foodstuffs. At the same time creditors wanted them to pay their
debts in hard currency rather than less valuable paper money. Shays was one of those
who lived in debt and struggled economically.
In Massachusetts the legislature increased taxes to eliminate the state's Revolutionary War
debt; between 1783 and 1786 taxes on land rose 60 percent. With that, farmers in many
parts of the state, but especially in the west, began demanding reduced levies and stay
laws that would prevent foreclosures on their property. The lower house responded by
passing relief measures, but the upper house, under the influence of eastern creditors,
rejected them.
As the economic crisis worsened, the legislature announced in July 1786 that it would
adjourn until January 1787. Many farmers felt frustrated and held town conventions at
which they wrote down their grievances. But with the legislature refusing to meet, they
concluded that the Massachusetts government was as unresponsive in 1786 as had been
the British Crown in 1776.
In the east armed mobs formed. One operating in Northampton in August 1786 prevented
a court from meeting. In September mobs under the direction of Job Shattuck disrupted
court sessions in Concord. In late November, however, government troops arrested
Shattuck and quelled the disturbances.
In the west, though, insurrection spread throughout the Berkshires; farmers gathered in
armed groups, including some 1,500 who organized under Daniel Shays. They marched on
the courts to prevent mortgage foreclosure hearings and broke into jails to release
debtors. A contemporary observer outlined the reasons for the protest, referring to "the
present expensive mode of collecting debts, which, by reason of the great scarcity of cash,
will of necessity fill our gaols with unhappy debtors."
A leader of the Massachusetts elite, Benjamin Lincoln, observed:
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The proportion of debtors runs high in this State. Too many of them are
against the government. The men of property...are generally abettors of our
present constitution, but few of them have been in the field, and it remains
quite problematical whether they will in time fully discover their own
interests...[and] lend for a season out of their property for the security of the
remainder.
But they did "lend for a season out of their property" when eastern creditors provided the
money for the state to raise an army, with the troops commanded by Lincoln. On January
25, 1787, Shays tried to capture the arsenal at Springfield but was turned back by an
artillery barrage, and on February 4 the uprising effectively ended when Lincoln's army
defeated Shays's force at Petersham.
At a trial of four of the rebels, Massachusetts chief justice William Cushing said that they
had tried "to overturn all government and order" and that they had given in "to the power
of the most restless, malevolent, destructive, tormenting passions." Daniel Shays avoided
trial by fleeing to New Hampshire and then Vermont before settling in western New York.
The Massachusetts government eventually pardoned him and all of the rebels.
Shays's Rebellion shook the political system. In Massachusetts the voters threw out the
conservative leadership in the spring of 1787 and replaced it with one more representative
of the farmers. The legislature subsequently passed several reforms, including a law that
exempted clothing, household goods, and tools of trade from impoundment for debt.
In the country as a whole, Shays's Rebellion stunned conservatives, who called it an
instance of the rabble gaining too much power and threatening anarchy. One member of
the elite said: "The natural effects of pure democracy are already produced among us. It is
a war against virtue, talents, and property carried on by the dregs and scum of mankind."
These conservatives acted to form a stronger national government that could contain
democratic impulses and secure order by righting the economy and, if necessary, using
military force. In 1787 they met in Philadelphia, where they dumped the Articles of
Confederation and replaced them with the Constitution.
Daniel Shays died in poverty and obscurity at age 78, but his rebellion had raised the
banner of liberty against tyranny. Although many Americans, including the Revolutionary
leader Sam Adams, thought that Shays had gone too far and had threatened to unleash
lawlessness and even class warfare, Shays and his followers saw themselves as acting
consistently with the precedent of the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson said in
defense of Shays's Rebellion: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with
the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." That indeed was the radical
alternative Daniel Shays had provided.
Feer, Robert A. Shays's Rebellion. New York: Garland, 1988.
Gross, Robert A., ed. In Debt to Shays: The Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1993.
Text Citation (Chicago Manual of Style format):
Hamilton, Neil A. "Shays, Daniel." American Social Leaders and Activists, American Biographies. New York:
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Facts On File, Inc., 2002. American History Online. Facts On File,
Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
ItemID=WE52&iPin=ASL224&SingleRecord=True (accessed October 6, 2014).
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