Shays' Rebellion

In 1786 and early 1787, Daniel Shays and other Massachusetts regulators shut county courts and marched against the federal arsenal at Springfield to protest debt collection and taxation. On January 25, 1787, militia under General Benjamin Lincoln broke the attack on the Springfield arsenal with cannon fire. The collapse of the uprising left the Confederation government embarrassed and the Massachusetts political system shaken.

Shays's Rebellion exposed the weakness of the Articles of Confederation in the face of internal disorder, public debt, and class conflict after the Revolutionary War. Massachusetts creditors and Governor James Bowdoin insisted on tax collection and court judgments, while western farmers demanded paper money, lower taxes, and relief from foreclosure. The rebellion therefore turned economic grievance into a constitutional argument about whether republican government could preserve order without stronger national institutions.

The uprising fed directly into the Annapolis Convention's warnings and strengthened the resolve of nationalists who met at Philadelphia in May 1787. In later ratification debates, Federalists repeatedly cited Shays's Rebellion as evidence that the Confederation could not secure either property or public peace.