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- [00:00]
Don Wildman
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- [02:05]
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- [02:28]
Don Wildman
It is the early hours of a bitter January morning in 1787. Snow crunches underfoot as a column of men moves steadily through the Massachusetts countryside. Farmers, laborers, veterans of the Revolution, many still guided by the discipline learned in their days serving in the Continental Army. They march in formation, muskets slung over shoulders Ahead on horseback rides a man named Daniel Shays. Though he may have the stern bearing of a former military man, Shays is a reluctant figure drawn into this struggle by the desperation of those following him. Together, these men, this force marches on the Springfield Armory about 90 miles west of Boston, its stores of weapons guarded by a newly raised militia. To the state of Massachusetts, this march is one of rebellion. To the men here in the snow, it is their last resort. After months of petitions ignored, the closing of courts, debts unpaid. Ever since this day, 239 years ago, a question has surrounded these actions. Are these men threatening a revolution or simply upholding one? Our guest for Today's episode is Dr. Daniel Bullen, author of the book Daniel Shea's Honorable Rebellion. Based In Western Massachusetts, Dr. Bullen's other works include the Dangers of Passion, the Transcendental Friendship of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, and the Love Lives of the Artists. Five stories of Creative Intimacy. I'm Don Wildman and this is American History Hit. Dan Shays Rebellion has had a fairly traditional telling over these past several hundred years. Yours is a different version of this. What drew you to retell this tale?
- [04:29]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Well, I found this story kind of literally on the side of the road. I saw a sign that said Daniel Shays Highway. I had no idea. I was kind of new to the area and just came home and started researching. And what I found to begin with was the story that they're still teaching in middle schools today, which is the Shays Rebellion was the unrest that led to the Constitution. Farmers were angry about taxes. They threatened to overthrow the government, which is clearly, that's what you do when you're just angry about taxes. And what this did was it proved to the founding fathers that they needed a stronger federal government. They needed to fix the problems with the Articles of Confederation and also, you know, created a federal government with a standing army that could put down these regional trouble. The story that's out there, when I started looking into it, the more I kept reading, the more it felt like this was really a popular story of populist organization that the people had gotten together. I don't mean populist in the way that it's been co opted. I just mean that the people got together, they organized themselves and they staged ultimately successful, nonviolent, sustained, anti austerity protests for six months in the face of really offensive, like flagrantly offensive economic policies coming down from the government in Boston. So those two stories played against each other. And I thought, well, you know, following in the footsteps of Howard Zinn, Here's a people's history that's been waiting to be told.
- [05:48]
Don Wildman
Okay, let's set the scene. 1787 as a nation. Where is America at at this time?
- [05:54]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
One of the important things to understand about these protests is all 13 states were experiencing the same economic troubles following the Revolution. They'd all gone into enormous amounts of debt, both to European governments and to their own merchant elites. Right. They had subscribed their own money to the war effort and they had received notes in return saying that they would be repaid plus 6% yearly interest for their investment. So they're seeing this as an investment in the war and in the post war situation. Really, nobody had confidence that this new government was going to come up with money. And then one of the precipitating factors was that the Brits, after the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, January 1784, the Brits say, oh, you like to be free? You want to be independent? Great. You can't trade in our ports anymore. So they closed off the Indies. And by closing the Indies, they denied American merchants along the coast an enormous source of economic income. And that triggered this crisis of debt collection as everybody looked to everybody else to try to collect it. And then the government's on the sidelines trying to pay in Massachusetts £1.5 million of state debt. Before the Revolution, it had been £100,000 of state debt. And this is at a time when an average laborer is getting 15 pounds a year and 70 pounds buys you 100 acre farm. So the scale of these problems was enormous. But it was only in Massachusetts that the elites in government really pressed this thing home and forgot about trying to take care of the people and just tried to get some for themselves and all the other states. There were protests in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and all the other governments figured out how to make a peace with their people. But in Massachusetts, the government said, full speed ahead, we're going to pay these debts in full on the backs of the people.
- [07:35]
Don Wildman
Revolution sounds great until you have to pay for it. That's the upshot of all, isn't it? This event we're talking about, which is usually called Shays Rebellion, happens against a backdrop of the problems of governance. At this point. The Articles of Confederation have been adopted in 1781. They run through till 1789. The Constitutional Convention will be convened in 1787. This event has everything to do with prompting that need for a constitution. The nation is weakly governed, capable of tackling crises of this nature. Is that Fair to say in general.
- [08:11]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Yeah. I mean, one of the big outcomes from the Constitution, which was not popular around here, but was the federal power of taxation and the power to raise a standing army. They were having a lot of troubles with interstate trade and the different currency policies across borders was one of the big problems that they were having. There had also been four different constitutional conventions, like attempts at the beginnings of constitutional conventions leading up to the famous one that got the job done that started in May of 1787. So really, you know, on the national level, this story, the way that it's still being told now, this story is about the troubles in Massachusetts that precipitated, that finally irritated George Washington enough that he would come out of retirement to lead the Constitutional Convention. I see on the ground, very different story. It's a story about successful organizing and nonviolent protest. But on the national level, you had people like nationalists like Alexander Hamilton came out against the, you know, what was known, what was branded as Shays Rebellion. And you had Henry Knox in Boston writing to George Washington inflating the numbers wildly, saying that 12 to 15,000 desperate and degenerate people were threatening to wage a war against the idea of good government, against liberty and the idea of good government. Right. So they're just telling George Washington, you're going to lose everything we fought for if you don't figure this out. And it's really a misrepresentation. Shays Rebellion was a term that was a propaganda term that was created to say these degenerates are going to overtake us, they're going to throw us out of government. And I think we need to keep in mind that this was a government that came in through revolution. And the big fear for any government that comes in through revolution is that they're going to be taken out through the next gyration in this. So they had to put a stop to it. So there's an argument to be made that Shays these protests were something that the government allowed to fester enough to treat it as a counter revolutionary statement that, hey, you're not coming in to take over. But you know, one of the things that I found that I always want to make sure to get across when I'm telling the story is that there was no violence. I mean, even George Washington's home, Mount Vernon, their website has a page for Shays Rebellion and it lists it as a violent insurrection in Massachusetts. It's not the case. Right. And changing that, I've had a hard time changing the story because people like the Idea of these, you know, disorganized rabble threatening good governance. In fact, they called themselves regulators, and they protested under that banner with, as you said, their uniforms, with their guns at their shoulders, with the military discipline to say, we're not that mob. We're not the democratic hordes you've been hearing about come to take your stuff and redistribute the wealth. We just can't stand the injustice that's been thrust on us.
- [10:45]
Don Wildman
And that injustice had to do with not being paid what they were owed. Right?
- [10:49]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
I mean, that was the beginning of it. I mean, so it's always treated as, oh, the farmers were angry about taxes. In fact, the farmers who, who served in the revolution were the first creditors, right? They gave their time, they gave their service, they gave family members, they gave limbs, you know, hands, eyes, legs to this war effort. They expected to be paid. They were originally paid in paper money that just lost its value immediately. Currency policy is kind of a rabbit hole you can go down, but it wasn't stable. We'll just say that 18th century money was not fixed and normal the way that we see it happening. There was vast inflation at the time, and the value of those notes just decreased to the point where the soldiers would use the paper money to stuff in their shoes, Right? Then as the war went on, people realized that people kept leaving. And so they realized, we're going to have to really pay them with actual money. So the government issued these promissory notes. And those promissory notes had the power of the government was behind them. But at the end of the war, the people had these piles of paper and no confidence that this new government was going to come up with actual coin. So the problem really started when the soldiers handed those notes over to their generals, to shopkeepers, to anybody who had money to give them money they could actually spend to start their farms back up. But those notes stayed in circulation and speculators started gathering these notes up. If there were rumors that the government would pay them, the price would go up. If there were rumors that the government was going to settle and depreciate them, the value would come down. But those values were published in the newspapers and everyone was literate, right? So even in western Massachusetts here, which felt pretty remote at the time, there's not a lot of government organization. The values of these soldiers own war pay is still published in the newspapers that are nailed to the walls in the taverns, which everyone could read. And so then when James Bowdoin comes into power in 1785 and says, we're going to pay these notes at full value. He was really rewarding the speculators, many of whom were inside of his own government, by paying them windfall profits on these notes that they themselves had paid pennies on the pound or, you know, 10 cents on the pound. So now the people, and this is why, you know, people, the story is typically that the people were angry about taxes. What they were angry about was they were being taxed. 90% of the taxes to pay this windfall to the speculators was levied on the people. So to be clear, they're being taxed, these farmers on these sandy, rocky hills, hillside farms are being taxed to pay the full value of their own war pay to speculators who never fought. Wow. Who bought the value at a huge discount, right? And then when they can't pay their farms, their livestock is going to be seized by the courts and sold at auction to raise the money where it's going to be sold at a huge discount. And who's buying those farms and who's buying that livestock in a post war downturn? The speculators who have money. So what, what the people really felt was that they were being brought under lordships again, right? They thought that they were going to be, instead of yeoman farmers on their own land, they were going to be tenant farmers with, you know, absentee landlords calling in from Boston saying, I need more rent for this.
- [13:54]
Don Wildman
Yeah, the tyranny is back. Amazing. We mentioned, of course, this takes place in Massachusetts. Why there you mentioned the elites. But let's describe this situation a little more detailed. Why does this happen in Massachusetts?
- [14:08]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
The best explanation I've seen for this comes from Rock Brynner, who is Yul Brynner's son, who wrote a very excellent dissertation about this. And he points out a simple fact, but I think indicative of a lot that Rockefeller points out that the people who knew how to run a state, right, they knew how to administer a state with policies that would keep the balance right, between different factions, between the elites, between the people, the farmers, the people who knew how to strike those balances were British. And they left Boston when the war was beginning. They all went back to England. And so the people who came into power and started running the state government were mostly coastal elites who were competitive amongst each other. But they don't have that experience of keeping the peace with the populace, of governing in a way that's going to strike that middle road that everybody feels like they've made a compromise, but they can live with it. John Hancock had been the governor, was the first governor of Massachusetts. And he was super wealthy, one of the wealthiest men in the state at the time. But he was kind of a class traitor, populist hero who tried to take steps to take care of the people and protect them from this financial crisis. The elites. And the 1780 Constitution, how that enshrined an elite government, you know, elites in government is another rabbit hole to go down. But that kept the people from really having a say in how policy was set. So even if something came out of the House of Representatives, the Senate squashed it, which feels a little contemporary, but everybody was getting kind of impatient with this crisis. The elites were getting impatient with this crisis. So when James Bowdoin ran in 1785, they brought him in on this platform of we're going to pay the debts in full, we're going to show the full faith and credit of the government, everybody's going to get paid. And what that really meant, that was code, as so many things are. That was code for, we're going to tax those peons, let them know that this wasn't their revolution and that they owe us for funding their war, is really the play.
- [16:02]
Don Wildman
It's so much a theme of what's to come in America. With the changing, of course, with the Industrial Revolution that comes, there's a growing movement towards the cities, more power to those elites who own those factories. That's to come. But this is the theme that's starting to develop, the schism, which is ironic because the likes of Thomas Jefferson are running this revolution or inspiring this revolution because of the agricultural identity of this nation. All that shifts. And this is sort of right in the pocket of all that change. The taxes that were on these rural farmers, I just want to understand, were far more burdensome than on the urban elites.
- [16:39]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
It was 90% of the taxes were going to be levied on the people and 10% were going to be borne by the businesses.
- [16:44]
Don Wildman
Okay, that was stated flat out.
- [16:46]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Yeah, that was their policy. Yep, that's what they passed. Just to return to this question of the elites and the people, there is a really interesting contradiction kind of conundrum woven into the heart of this, which is that revolution is being driven by kind of Enlightenment ideals. Folks on the coasts are very much Enlightenment figures. James Bowden, who's responsible for creating this mess politically, was also one of the founders of the American Academy of Arts and Science. He's sponsoring expeditions to go observe transits of the sun with planets crossing the face of the sun to see what they can tell about the face of astronomy at the time. These were people who knew about developments in metallurgy, crop rotation, all these things that we take for granted now as enlightenment products really kind of, I think, created this class bias because the people on the coast are reading these European journals where the scientists are pouring this stuff out. The people inland are doing things the same way that they've always been done since time immemorial. These are people who are making their own things out of the woods. They brought flax culture to western Massachusetts. They're famous for weavers, they're famous furniture makers. They're making everything for themselves. They don't need no stinking money. Right. They'll get by on their own, but they also, they're living in towns that are funded by European tools, glass, medicine, nails, like manufactured goods. That stuff's all coming from England. And England before the revolution had suppressed American industry so that Americans would be a captive market for British merchants. They didn't want competition from the native producers. Right. So this is all in the background. I mean, it's easy to idealize the romantic 18th century farmer, but he's taking place in a cosmopolitan world that includes the whole Atlantic and that includes slavery going and the export from New England was sending a lot of stuff down to the Indies. Well, why is there such a growth industry going on in the Indies? That was from the slave trade. Right. So it's hard to separate these things out. But there are moments in my story here in Massachusetts where you can really look at the people and say, you know, what, what bravery, what solidarity.
- [18:45]
Don Wildman
Right. There's a quote, sort of loosely attributed to a farmer identified as plow jogger. That does a good job surmising the situation. I'll read it. I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war. Been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, continental rates and all rates been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables and collectors and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth. The great men are going to get all we have. And I think it' for us to rise and put a stop to it and have no more courts, no sheriffs, no lawyers, collectors nor lawyers. Boy, does this sound American. This is such a theme in this country to this day, and perhaps even more so as we come into these years to come. Let's take a short break. We'll be back to talk about how these protests began to evolve from political action into outright rebellion.
- [19:42]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Foreign.
- [19:47]
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- [22:12]
Don Wildman
We're back with Dan Bullen discussing Shays Rebellion. Dan We've talked about a guy named James Bolton. I just want to make sure that we understand who he is.
- [22:20]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
James Bowden was a son, not the first son, but a son of the wealthiest merchant in Boston at the time. His father had huge holdings of land up into Maine interests throughout the Atlantic. And when James Bowdoin came in, he was part of a class of merchants kind of competitive amongst each other, but he was their chosen representative to take the reins and be the governor for a while. I mentioned the 1780 constitution. The rule that had been passed in the 1780 constitution was that to run for governor, one had to be worth £1,000. To be a senator was 600. Right. They raised the barrier to voting from £40 net worth to £60 net worth after the revolution. So they actually made it, here's this revolution for democracy and participation. But they actually made it harder and put the people kind of on a pedestal. Who were in charge, I'm told by people who were actually by people, but by an organization of descendants of this class of people that James Bowdoin's portrait was not hung in the state house for 100 years because he botched this thing so badly. And just, you know, not to give it away, but this thing ends in a landslide victory at the polls, peaceful elections. The people just overwhelmingly threw James Bowdoin out because nobody liked what he. These troubles that he created.
- [23:36]
Don Wildman
And he is the tip of the iceberg of the enormous amount of change in American society that is happening in a big way in Massachusetts, but elsewhere as well and comes into conflict with our main character who is Daniel Shays. Revolutionary War veteran, served as a captain in the Continental army, fought at Lexington, Saratoga, Bunker Hill. What a resume. Upon returning from the war. He has not been paid in full for his military service. You know, we did that in episode on the Newberg conspiracy, all that back in 1783. These are the inklings of what we're talking about have been happening all over the place. Of course, this, this building resistance and resentment towards the so called elites, if not, you know, leaders of the army, which in those days George Washington put down, you know, through a discussion, but it's only building. So Daniel Shays comes home, he's summoned by the state court for his outstanding debts which he obviously could not pay off. And this was not uncommon. What year are we talking about here?
- [24:31]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
So James Bowd comes in in 1785. That's really when the currency policy starts to change. It's spring of 1786 is when they, they come out with this resolution that they're going to pay all of the taxes in full at the people's expense. And this is when the people start petitioning. So it's always important to say that the people, as soon as these laws were passed, the people were petitioning. They were getting together. And this is a rural landscape at the time. There's not much state infrastructure. So the towns are getting together, and this is one of the reasons we love living in Massachusetts. They would call the town meeting, they would bang the gavel. They would authorize themselves a body for the town. They would speak in the town's voice. They would make decisions as a town. When those town decisions were filtered up the line, they would be heard at county conventions where towns would send delegates and make decisions together. And all of the decisions, all the requests that they're sending to Boston are just universally ignored. Right. So Shays. The histories of what's known as Shays Rebellion usually start In July of 1786, when the legislature, the state legislature, adjourned without hearing any, you know, without passing any reforms for the people. And so now the people are looking at late August, and here comes the court in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the people are thinking, are we going to obstruct it or not? And they do have a long tradition going back to England of kind of theatrical street protest where when the people feel that the government's out of alignment with the people, they'll take to the streets. They obstruct some business. They slow things down. They make people see that they're the dignified people. They're not that mob you've heard about. They're the dignified veterans who fought for the country, and they're not being treated right. So this protest is pitched as. Honestly, it's pitched in the histories as kind of a Jan6 type insurrection, where the people tried to overthrow the government by negating elections. Really, it was much more of a nonviolent protest. And more and more people are in the streets about this. They're fighting in a game where the rules are whoever shoots loses. Right. And that's where the people are showing up peacefully. Never a stone thrown through a courthouse window, never fisticuffs, no swords were brandished. You know, there's inflammatory exaggerations of these things to prejudicial either way. But there's no record of any. Any blood being spilled at these protests, which started in August and went through December.
- [26:47]
Don Wildman
And through this process of building protest movement, Shays realizes that some of his fellow veterans were in the same position he was in. Of course.
- [26:56]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
No, it was a widespread condition.
- [26:57]
Don Wildman
Yeah, tell me about Luke Day and Eli Parsons, other people who play a part in this.
- [27:03]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
So in the beginning, there are peaceful protests. Daniel Shays is the head of the Pelham militia, is way up in the hills, not close to Northampton. He's asked to lead the men to the first protest. He declines. There's a deacon who leads them. Daniel Shays kind of sits it out. There are a round of protests in five different court towns. The government's response is ominous. It's making threats. The people aren't backing down. The second round of courts that the people started to close were the criminal courts because they're going to issue arrest warrants for the leaders of the first round of protests. And the people have decided, we're all in. We're not going to let this happen. That's when Daniel Shays gets brought in to kind of keep people in line, to keep the violence from happening. He's well respected, he worked his way up the ranks. I think you mentioned he was an officer. He worked his way up from basically private to being a commissioned captain. So he has the respect of people at a wide range of levels and he's brought in to keep the peace. By the time this comes to a head, the government in January finally says, all right, we're sending an army, we're issuing arrest warrants, we're not putting up with this. Daniel Shays is the head of about 1200 people in Pelham, which is up in the hills. Eli Parsons was an artillery officer who crossed the river with Washington. Luke Day is in West Springfield, is across the river from Springfield, which frozen in January, but He's got about 600 people in West Springfield. Eli Parsons had 400 in Chicopee, which is just north of Springfield. And they're planning this kind of three prong pincer movement to surround the armory and take the. When they were asked what they wanted there, they said barracks and stores. Right. And Luke Day, if I can just take one quick step back. Luke Day was somebody who came from a prominent family. I believe there's a museum to that family still today. They had very prominent in local politics, but he was somebody who rose into that officer class. You mentioned the Newburgh conspiracy. These were officers who had been advocating and ultimately won the passage of a provision to give lifelong half pay pensions for officers. Right. So there's a movement to create an officer class in America as opposed to like a flat democracy society of the Cincinnati. Right. They gave two months worth of pay to be part of this thing. And that was funding these lobbying efforts to create this kind of hereditary aristocracy from the officer class. Luke Day was in that class, but his family had their debts and he had spent some time in debtor's prison as a result of it. And debtors prison to be clear, on a class basis was a situation where the creditor would pay the court to keep you in prison. It was just for the nights you were free to go during the day, but they would keep you there until your family could raise enough money to pay off the debt was really the angle. So it's kind of a form of ritual class based humiliation to take you and put you in with the rapists and murderers and the criminals until your family could come up with the money. But the idea was this is an investment for the creditor to make because if they paid the state, their people, the debtors people would come up with the money to do it. Creditors aren't going to do this if you're just a poor farmer.
- [30:02]
Don Wildman
I feel the need to place us in time here over and over again. But the point is really this is 1786. We are, what is that 13 years out from the Revolutionary War being over. Right. 1783. So almost we're on to a generation is passing since this victory. The temptation is to say hey guys, come on, it's hard to build a country. This is going to take a while. Except this has already been a while. That's why this is so strange, you know. And something new is setting in a new model of this so called democracy that doesn't feel democratic at all. The measures that they are taking to deal with this in the fall I guess of 1786, peaceful resistance. As we talk about petitions signed, good old fashioned petitions sent to the state legislature, county conventions being held to demanding tax relief and paper money. Then direct disruption. Protesters, especially in rural Massachusetts, begin physically shutting down courts. Their thinking is to stop the courts from, from sitting. They will be able to stop the foreclosures of farmers land. This is all very, very direct and simple really. They also use tactics like organizing marches, military formation mostly to remind people that we're talking about the revolution. We all did this together, remember. But the efforts are ultimately fruitless. The government refuses to compromise on their wishes. Arrests warrants are issued for the ringleaders. This gets really ugly real fast, doesn't it?
- [31:24]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Yeah, and I mean the government had gone after one of the ringleaders back in November. At the end of November they found him in a place by the river. When they arrested him, he resisted arrest and they sliced him. A Harvard lawyer who was in the militia sliced him behind the knee with his saber, crippling him for life, like severing the tendons behind his knee. And even with blood in the snow, there was some rhetoric that people Were saying, you know, there's blood in the snow, the seeds of war are now sown. But. But the people kept the peace. They did not rush out and massacre anybody. They didn't go looting warehouses, they didn't go tearing up merchants property, tearing the houses off the foundations, which is something they did during the initial protests in Boston before the war. But, yeah, by January 10th, the government issues arrest warrants. They're going to send an Army. By January 19th, they're sending 3,000 men west from Boston. And now it's really come to a head. And like you said, you really kind of hit it in the introduction. This was the people's last chance to have any say before the government institutes martial law in the region. That's usually the moment when people say, oh, well, weren't they rebels? Didn't they try to overthrow the government by taking the arms at the. No, they were asked what they wanted. They said barracks and stores. It was January. They wanted to be inside. I mean, these are farmers. They've been eating out of their cellars, out of their root cellars, out of their supplies that need to get them through the entire winter. Instead of doing the winter's work and making any commercial activity out of that, that they're just spending that food on. Feeding an army at this point, like feeding 300 to 1,200 men marching around, they have to be fed, so they're eating through their supplies. And they were looking for someplace to be inside to try to have this negotiation when the government came up.
- [33:00]
Don Wildman
Meanwhile, these wealthy merchants, the elites, have begun to fund a militia. Correct. They've actually organized themselves. Where does that militia come from?
- [33:09]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Well, the elites in Boston, and this is extra judicial. Right. The government has not authorized this, but Governor Bowdoin goes around to his friends and gets them to subscribe money for this army. The regular people were, you know, people who would join up with this, with this militia, were offered £2 for a month of marching with a half pint of rum per day.
- [33:29]
Don Wildman
I see mercenaries.
- [33:30]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
That was your pay.
- [33:30]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [33:31]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
I mean, as such as it was. But the economic times were so bad that they didn't have that hard a time finding people to take this up. In Boston, the maritime industries had been really hit. So sailmakers, sailors, like everybody who's, you know, in the business of sailing and provisioning sailing ships is kind of looking for work. They would get clerks were roped into this like young people who wanted the glory of being in a revolutionary kind of setting, who were too young for the revolution. When people Looked at these forces next to each other, they're looking at the people who call themselves regulators. Right. These were people who had organized around the idea that they could regulate their own affairs. You see those people, there's largely the battle tested veterans on one side and their families and their extended families. And on the other side you have have clerks and kids and misfits and you know, the kind of non military people holding the grounds. But when Daniel Shays marched up, Eli Parsons and Luke Day were supposed to join him to make a three prong attack, you know, three prong approach to the arsenal. Luke Day had some qualms about it. His pastor had told him that if any of his men were killed during this engagement, that Luke Day himself would be, you know, basically liable for murder at judgment day. So Luke Day said, let's hold off for a day. He sent a note that was intercepted. Daniel Shays didn't get that note. So he approached with 1200 men alone at 250 yards. They were approached in the road by an envoy from the armory who said, they're going to fire if you keep going. And Daniel Shays said, it's what we want.
- [34:58]
Don Wildman
Oh, I see. Wow.
- [35:00]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
At 100 yards, they kept coming. At 100 yards, they're told the same thing. If you keep going, they're going to fire. And one of his lieutenants, Adam Wheeler, said, it's what we want. Right. Because again, the rule is whoever shoots, loses.
- [35:13]
Don Wildman
Yes. Things have gotten very dramatic. Why the Springfield Armory? What was so strategic about that?
- [35:19]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Mostly it was a place kind of. It was out of the way. Enough from the rest of the Revolutionary War fighting that the government, the federal government had determined that would be a good place to create a stockpile of weapons, cannon, muskets, gunpowder, and the provisions that would keep an army going. So that was kind of the military focal point. There were also barracks there to keep an army housed. So that's where the people are going to go, because that's where the army is going to go. And we have to keep those guns from falling into the army's hands and then being used against us. So that was the nexus.
- [35:49]
Don Wildman
So this march that we're talking about is really quite a dramatic tipping point. All other measures have been tried. Nothing has worked for a year or so for sure. And during this heightened period of time, this march is the final resort. And grabbing this arsenal is a matter of getting more weapons and so forth for building an army even more. I mean, it's easy to understand why people think of this as more than just a rebellion. It's potentially a revolution.
- [36:13]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Yeah. I mean, this was part of what drove my fascination was how far did these people go? And what I found, honestly, was that most of the histories that existed, I mean, there are 19 books with the title Shays rebellion. Right. This. This is well covered territory. But most of those books, what they did was they took the things that were said. After this march collapsed, after the people were driven out of the state, just scattered. Before this army. After the army came and took over western Massachusetts, the people mostly fled. But the papers were filled with these inflammatory statements, like, we should march to Boston and leave not one stone on another, like, we should just lay the town in ashes. And that kind of rhetoric. And so what the histories almost unanimously did was they would take these statements and put them in the beginning. Right. And what they're building is this caricature of the people. People. And so really what funded me writing this book was a deep confidence that the people were really dignified throughout. Right. They kept the peace. Yeah. There's inflammatory stuff in the newspapers. Sure. Right. In the comments section of Facebook, you can find all kinds of inflammatory things. But when you read their petitions, they're servile. Right. Like, if your honors would. Would listen, you know, we're sure that you would be of the same heart. You know, we have no intention of breaking the peace. I mean, like, servile in. In the letters that they're sending, because there's this class divide, and they need to be respected in Boston. So they're sending the most flowery prose they can come up with out of these farm towns, and they're just begging to be taken seriously. And the government is, you know, just coming back with these accusations.
- [37:41]
Don Wildman
Yeah. As they march on this armory on this day in January, the militia first, who's defending that armory, first fired warning shots over their heads. Then they fired grapeshot rounds from their cannons. And four of Shay's followers are killed, 20 are wounded. This gets very serious. All the while, no musket fire was exchanged between them. They hadn't fired on them. Right.
- [38:04]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
No. The people did not charge on the armory in retribution for these four lives that had been lost. They were approaching by eights in the road. I mean, you have to picture them within the narrow road. Right. They're approaching in a column of eights. So that first three lines of that column are laid out by these cannon shots. And what they did was they ran away. They turned and ran. Two cries of murder. Murder. Right. Again, this wasn't a battle for control of a military objective. This was a PR campaign to win the hearts and minds of the people, and it's a really effective as we've seen, with the outpouring of support after Preddy and Good were murdered out in
- [38:40]
Don Wildman
Minneapolis, the rebel advance effectively collapses immediately. At that moment anyway, with the majority of the rebels fleeing to the North. After this next, Dan and I will come back and discuss the immediate aftermath of this event, its consequences, and most importantly, the differing interpretations people have applied.
- [39:08]
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- [40:48]
Don Wildman
And we're back with author Dan Bullen discussing Shays Rebellion, an oft misunderstood event of American history in the mid-1780s. By February 1787, the rebellion has seemingly been quashed. But has the issues been resolved?
- [41:03]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
No. I mean, the government made no concessions. They just kind of forced people into compliance. The people who signed the oath of Allegiance to kind of go back to their homes in peace had to give up their gu and the right to vote. Which is an interesting which I'm not
- [41:16]
Don Wildman
sure there's a crackdown. Right. They go after the ringleaders.
- [41:18]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Yep. And most of what happened, I mean, the biggest result from these protests, this campaign was it drove people out of the state. They just, they could find other places in Vermont and western New York and Pennsylvania where, you know, they might have to fight the natives who were still putting up resistance there, but they didn't have to deal with this state sponsored land grab that they were up against in Massachusetts. As soon as this stuff started, it just started driving people west and north into Vermont, which Vermont had only really been opened for settlement in 1760. So that's where Daniel Shays ends up. The last part of this story is really a refugee story from Daniel Shays perspective because he ends up in Vermont with about 300 followers. He petitions the governor there, Chalmes Chittenden, for asylum and the legislature in Vermont. They want to bring Vermont in as the 14th state of the union, following the original 13. And they don't want trouble with James Bowdoin, who's a very influential leader of a powerful state. State. So they say, no, you can't stay here. Daniel Shays then rides in February, rides to Quebec to meet with Lord Dorchester, the Governor General for Canada. And again he says, yeah. And his line with the crown behind him is to say, when you guys want to be subjects to the King again, come talk to us. But until then, we're not getting involved in your squabbles. So Daniel Shays at this point is kind of a stateless individual. Vermont allowed him to create a settlement 1900ft up a hillside. And they built something that has recently been excavated that they're labeling it the Shays Settlement. But they stayed there from February through the next year and a half. But they were in Vermont kind of as the center of intrigue, while the people in Massachusetts went to their polls on April 1st. Just to be clear with the timeline, they were driven out of Massachusetts February 4th in the morning. They were kind of approached by an army. They dissolved in front of them.
- [43:05]
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Them.
- [43:06]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Technically, the protests weren't squashed, they just dissolved. Right. They just got out of the way and put it off till elections. And then when the elections came, it was a landslide. Out here in western mass, it was 3 to 1 for John Hancock coming back in. In Boston, which should have been James Bowdoin's territory, it was two to one against.
- [43:22]
Don Wildman
Well, just to be clear, I mean, we should sort of itemize these things. There was the immediate crackdown afterwards with all these folks fleeing off. There was a martial law Pat passed, basically, which gave authorization for the state to reimburse the merchants who had funded the militia. There's what's called the Disqualification act of 1787, which forbade any acknowledged rebels from holding various elected offices. I mean, this feels like a fascism going on here. It's. It's really a right.
- [43:49]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Or serving as a tavern keeper or a teacher.
- [43:52]
Don Wildman
Oh, okay, good. All of this, as you say, backfires and costs this governor his position in the next election as he lost John Hancock. And things tilt back the other way. 4000 signed confessions for their part in the rebellion, got pardons in return for this election. Eighteen were sentenced to death. Most had those sentences commuted, appealed and were pardoned. Shays himself is pardoned in 1788 and finally emerges from hiding and returns to Massachusetts in glory. Is that right?
- [44:20]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
No, he actually never came back to the state. He went to Vermont. He left the state on February 4th. 4th. On February 28th, 10 suitors filed claims against his property, and some of them were people in his movement. So this is how litigious and money starved everybody was. Well, if he's not coming back, he owes me some money, so I'm going to make a claim on his farm. So he didn't have anything here. He had family in Bennington and then across the New York border. So he ended up kind of following the general movement west to Albany and then died in 1825 out in the Finger Lake a poor man.
- [44:54]
Don Wildman
1825 did not come back to anything. I'm surprised the society of Cincinnati didn't step up for this guy.
- [45:01]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Yeah, I think once everybody realized that things were moving on, nobody wanted to revisit this period. I don't think anybody in Daniel Shea's family thought, ah, we have this heroic legacy we have to keep intact. Right. It was largely, you know, everybody wanted to pull together. We're Americans. We're here with the united purpose. This intra American squabbles are no good. So let's just paper it over. And so I think that's a big part of why these people's story got kind of got stranded is nobody wanted to tell this story about this squabble where Americans were. And even at the time they were facing each other across these courtyards and sometimes across the armaments that they had, their muskets or cannon. But these were people who all the respect across those barriers was. Was enormous. They had just all fought a war together. They'd all been through it fairly recently. Right. So the appetite for spilling blood over this was not very high. I Mean, I think it was a lot higher. 1774, 1775. But by 1786, nobody. And I think there's even an echo of the history that they remembered, the 10 years in the 1600s under Oliver Cromwell when there was no monarchy. And people. Now there's a hint of. There's an echo of. Of. Well, is that how long we can go without a monarchy before they come back into power? I mean, it's a deep echo, but people are feeling like, how long can we get away with this?
- [46:18]
Don Wildman
Yeah. And this becomes the prevailing narrative of this event, that there is the need for a stronger federal government. And then, of course, those who argue against that, in the founder's eyes, Jefferson sees this as what becomes the seeds of the Democratic Republicans. The everyman needs to be defended, agriculture is predominant, and all of that democratic value stuff. But the other side of the issue is Washington, Hamilton and Madison, who are believing in a stronger federal government, which is going to lead to this constitutional convention in 1787. How much do you think that in reality, Shays rebellion actually is the trigger for this? Or is that just a convenient macro?
- [46:56]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
There is a debate among scholars about whether it was going to happen anyway or whether Shays is really the one who brought it about. I think they're both true. It was going to happen anyway, and Shays was the one who was the instrument because of people like Henry Knox telling George Washington about what everything he was going to lose if they didn't get their stuff together and make this change. But it's interesting the way you put it, with Jefferson opposed to Washington. Jefferson heard about these events from. He's in Paris at this point, later in the year in 1787, and he writes in a letter about this trouble in Massachusetts. Can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honorably conducted?
- [47:29]
Don Wildman
Yes.
- [47:29]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Right. God forbid we should be 20 years without such a revolution or without such a rebellion.
- [47:35]
Don Wildman
I'll finish that quote for you. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. So as only Thomas Jefferson.
- [47:45]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Right. I mean, but he really, you know, from the distance of Paris, it can look attractive for the people to hold their government to account. George Washington, on the other side at about this time, wrote in a letter to a friend that mankind, when left to themselves, are not fit for their own government. Right. So there's the deep distrust of the Democratic hordes. Right, Exactly. But they've largely been characterized as. Through the histories. In fairness to Washington, though, when he first heard about these troubles In Massachusetts, his response was, if the people are angry, why haven't their concerns been addressed?
- [48:16]
Don Wildman
Interesting.
- [48:17]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
And then he started getting, you know, the propaganda that told him that the rabble were coming.
- [48:21]
Don Wildman
You'll need parties for that. You need political parties and newspapers and broadsides that support that kind of thing. And that begins the 1800s, doesn't it? This all sort of shapes into, you know, that which we are just overwhelmed with today, where our views of our personal lives and politics are, are taken up by larger entities that articulate them for us and the tail begins to wag the dog. And here we are.
- [48:45]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Our local paper was founded to give merchants an excuse. You give merchants a platform. It was founded In September of 1787, as these things are happening, to give merchants a platform to call the people lazy moochers who just want things for free, who don't want to work, who are busy drinking imported rum all the time and just want to, you know, want to take from their wealthier neighbors. I mean that was, was. They called them levelers at the time, we call them socialists now, but it's the same incoherent caricature.
- [49:11]
Don Wildman
Let's just underscore your argument here, which is really the point of this conversation, that this was not a chaotic rabble rousing protest. It had organization, it had reason. It was organized and community based resistance in an American tradition. Really.
- [49:29]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Yep. And it's an American tradition that came from England. But yeah, and I would add dignity and restraint to your descriptor, they were not there to rough people up. I mean, there was some score settling, there was sporadic arson once the thing actually collapsed and before the elections came due, there was a little bit of local score settling. But when people got together and got organized, they never threw the stone through a courthouse window. There's nothing, there's no violence. And I see a lot of restraint and dignity in that.
- [49:57]
Don Wildman
I expected at the end of this conversation after writing out my notes that we would be talking about, ah, the Constitution then comes out of this. Actually, what I'm feeling coming out of this is, ah, the political parties come out of this. Ah, the mechanisms of, of democratic voicing of opinions come out of this. And for better and for worse, that's what happens. The Constitution of course has part of that, but as you say, probably would have happened anyway for the need of an army at least.
- [50:23]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Right. And out here in Western Mass, the, that Constitution was, you know, they were against ratification heavily because they thought that the, that the elites were passing a measure, you know, they would be taxed to pay for suppression of the natives at the frontiers and to keep slavery going in the city.
- [50:38]
Don Wildman
So next time you're in a conversation, some very elite conversation in a cocktail party about Shays rebellion argued the opposite side, that this was not a January 6th situation. This was actually very much in the tradition of Americans voicing their opinions and expecting to be heard and then not. Our guest today for today's episode has been Dr. Daniel Bullen, author of the book Daniel Shea's honorable rebellion. Dr. Bullen's other works include the Dangers of Passion, the Transcendental Friendship of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boy, do I want to talk to you about that. That's so fascinating. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, who I don't know anything about the love lives of the five stories of creative intimacy. We'll cover those books in another conversation. I hope in the future. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [51:22]
Dr. Daniel Bullen
Thanks so much for having me on.
- [51:27]
Don Wildman
Thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. From mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, please share with a friend. American history hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Thanks so much.
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Dr. Daniel Bullen
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Dr. Daniel Bullen
Oh, no.
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Dr. Daniel Bullen
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Dr. Daniel Bullen
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