Early Rumblings

Prior to the altercation at the Springfield Armory, there were multiple farmer uprisings across Western Massachusetts that started Shays’ Rebellion. Farmers began gathering in large groups in order to disrupt the meetings of the Court of Common Pleas. Their hopes were to stop any more taxes from being passed, and to keep the state government from taking away their lands.

During the American Revolution, the U.S. government began printing paper currency in order to pay for the war effort, along with selling bonds and loans. However, as the war began to drag on the government began printing more and more paper money that was not “interest-bearing.” This money worked as a sort of forced loan upon the people who spent it [1]. After the war ended, states that wanted to protect their own sovereignty from the federal government, took matters into their own hands and began taxing their inhabitants in order to pay off the national debt that sat at around fourteen million dollars. Land owners were then forced to pay a land tax along with a head tax without any discretion between the lands value or whether the tax payers were rich or poor. To make matters worse, it was required that all tax payers pay their taxes in the form of coins rather than paper currency [2].

However, before the use of force, farmers began writing petitions to their local governments. Conventions began meeting in Massachusetts in order to discuss ways of fixing the national debt. Some options that were brought to the table included cutting the pay of government officials, increasing the power of towns, all the way to removing the government from Boston, and rewriting the Massachusetts constitution. Even so, all of these options were denied by the government and the result would be some fifteen hundred men marching on the Northampton Court in order to stop the court from meeting and possibly passing laws for more taxes [3].

1786 saw extreme poverty among rural farmers who owed great sums of money to merchants and the state governments. In order to pay back these debts, state governments began ordering these farmers lands be taken in order to pay back their debts [4]. Many other bills had been put to the Senate and the House of Representatives in order to try and fix the depression the country found itself in. However, all were refused by each branch of government respectively.  The rural farmers of central and Western Massachusetts believed that a meeting of the Senate and House of Representatives would result in more dissatisfaction due to the meeting being held in Boston. Rural farmers felt that a meeting in Boston would put the government under the influence of the wealthy merchants who paid less in taxes than they did. After the meeting of the Senate and the House, unhappy tax-payers in Hampshire County held their own convention in order to protest the state government. Then, in August of the same year, the Court of Common Pleas was to meet in Hampshire County. However, on the day of their meeting they found the court house was surrounded by an armed mob which prevented a meeting of the court [5].

The people of Middlesex, led by Job Shattuck, broke up the Court of Common Pleas in Concord, Massachusetts, in September of 1786. Shattuck then wrote a memorial to the judges of the court stating:

“That is was the voice of the people of the county that the court of general sessions of the peace and of common pleas shall not sit in this county until such time as the people shall have a redress of a number of grievances they labor under at present.”

Shattuck would lead rebellions against the courts in north-eastern Massachusetts until November of 1786 when his force is defeated near Groton, Massachusetts. The defeat of Shattuck ended any other rebellions there might have been in the north-eastern part of the state [6].

To follow the happenings in Hampshire and Middlesex, in September Worcester saw a similar event unfold. An armed mob of around one-hundred men surrounded the courthouse which prevented the Court of Common Pleas from meeting their either. Then, in the eastern most county of the state, Berkshire County, an armed mob broke into a jail and set free the prisoners which prevented the Court from meeting again. The “insurgents”, as they became known, figured that if the court could not meet then they could not issue the sale of lands from these farmers. Thus, satisfied with their success, the insurgents moved onto Springfield, Massachusetts in order to stop the meeting of the Supreme Court [7].

The five or six-hundred insurgents that then headed to Springfield would become some fourteen-hundred, and all would participate in the battle over the Springfield Armory.

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[1] Rachel R. Parker, “Shays’ Rebellion: An Episode in American State-Making,” Sociological Perspectives 34, no. 1 (1991): 99.

[2] Ibid., 99-100.

[3] Ibid., 100.

[4]  Richard Peet, “A Sign Taken for History: Daniel Shays’ Memorial in Petersham, Massachusetts,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86, no. 1 (1996): 21.

[5] Edward Everett Hale Sr., The Story of Massachusetts, Edward Everett Hale Sr., (Boston: D. Lathrop Company, 1891), 304-305.

[6] Walter A. Dyer, “Embattled Farmers,” The New England Quarterly 4, no. 3 (1931): 470.

[7] Jonathan Smith, “The Depression of 1785 and Daniel Shays’ Rebellion.” The William and Mary Quarterly 5, no. 1 (1948): 84.