Shays's Rebellion

Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle, Leonard Richards, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2002

The Shays Rebellion is one of those dark periods in United States history. Most people have heard of it but know little to nothing of what went on in it. In fact, most people would probably be hard pressed to state what era it was from. It falls in with the Whiskey Rebellion and the War of Jenkins Ear as something people have heard of but know nothing about.

Typical history books gloss it as a few farmers heavily in debt who briefly tried to shut down the Massachusetts court system in an attempt to alleviate their debt burden.

Richards takes that assumption and turns it on its head. He powerfully argues the Shays Rebellion was misnamed, is misrepresented and vastly underestimated in importance.

He starts out with a brief history of the rebellion itself in which perhaps 4000 men closed various court systems in Massachusetts forcibly. Nobody was harmed...they simply prevented judges from taking their seats or hearing cases. It escalated to the point where the militia was called out. However, many members of the state militia were among those closing the courthouses so this measure failed.

Finally, a group of the men closing the courts, who were calling themselves Regulators, moved to access weapons in a state storehouse but were defeated by a hastily called together force under General Lincoln.

Scattered skirmishes followed this up with very light casualties. Finally the rebellion faded away. In the aftermath 2 men were hung, several were fined, and others simply took an oath of loyalty to the state.

At this point most history books end the story. Richards, however, digs a little deeper.

First off, he powerfully argues the composition of the rebels is vastly different than what historians have reported. He uses the lists of men who took the oath of loyalty to show that instead of debt-ridden farmers, the rebels came from all walks and classes of life...if anything the farmers were the smallest portion of the rebels.

He later points out the name "Regulators" was deliberately taken to tie the rebels together with principled men rebelling against out of control governments and gives brief histories of other "Regulator" movements from the early colonies.

He also makes convincing arguments that Shays was not the primary leader of the Rebellion but was retroactively made out to be the scapegoat.

Finally, he demonstrates how the push to develop and ratify the Constitution was a direct result of fears that other disaffected groups would cause problems throughout the colonies.

Thus his picture of Shays Rebellion is of men acting to continue to fight for the principles they had fought for during the Revolution and the Constitution as being a reaction to suppress the efforts of men such as Shays and those those associated with him.

At times the book gets dragged down in rather dry and technical lists, but these are necessary to demonstrate and prove Richard's point that these were not broke farmers but were in some cases the wealthiest men of the backwoods areas who were rebelling. It is an excellent look at how part of our history has been changed to keep us from understanding how the principles of the Revolution were co-opted by and for the wealthy elite of Boston.