SHAYS–an unpaid ex-Revolutionary Vet–LED VETS IN FAILED 1786 ATTEMPT TO BLOCK FORECLOSURES

By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)

Shays’ Rebellion (August 1786–February 1787) was never just a footnote between the Revolution and the Constitution. It was the first significant test of whether the new American republic would choose partnership—care, cooperative survival, basic human dignity—or domination, where the powerful use state violence, courts, sheriffs, and debt to force the poor into obedience.

History shows which path they chose.

And the same choice confronts us today.

FORCLOSURES FACED REVOLUTIONARY VETS

After fighting for the Revolution, Daniel Shays and thousands of veterans returned to their farms expecting gratitude, land security, maybe even the pay they had been promised. Instead, they met:

• Unpaid wages

• Skyrocketing taxes

• Coin-only debt demands

• Courts ready to seize land

Coastal merchants in Boston demanded “hard money,” and the legislature squeezed the countryside to please creditors. Sheriffs auctioned farms filled debt courts with defendants they loaded, chained into wagons to take them to prison.

Shays and his fellow farmers had carried muskets for freedom—now they faced foreclosure for want of coins they never had.

FARMERS’ BODIES BLOCKED FORCLOSURES

The farmers tried petitioning for tax relief, paper money, and a pause in collections. Legislators—mostly tied to merchant interests—dismissed them.

So the farmers used the one tool they had left: their bodies. Collectively, the farmers formed mobs of “REGULATORS” to stop forclosures.

In Worcester, Northampton, and other western towns, crowds of armed and unarmed farmers stood before courthouse steps, making it physically impossible for foreclosures to proceed.

Some carried old war flags: “LIBERTY.”

Some carried their children.

All carried the memory of fighting a king, only to face a new system that felt eerily familiar.

MERCHANT MILITIA MURDERED FORCLOSURE PROTESTERS

Boston elites responded by raising a privately funded militia. Not a public force—the wealthy literally pooled money to hire soldiers to crush the uprising.

At the Springfield Armory, the Regulators marched to stop the state from arming the creditors’ militia. Shots were fired. Several were killed. Hundreds arrested. Some were sentenced to hang.

Most were eventually pardoned—but only after being broken.

The message was clear: The new republic would protect property over people.

WOMEN, ENSLAVED PEOPLE, URBAN POOR, AND NATIVE NATIONS—ALL UNDER THE SAME BOOT

Shays’ Rebellion exposes the early structure of the United States: a multi-layered system of domination.

Women
Women who kept farms alive during the war found themselves legally erased afterward—no vote, little property control, no political voice.

Enslaved Africans
The new republic protected slavery. Southern wealth depended on enslaved labor; Northern merchants depended on Southern exports.

Urban Poor
Sailors, dockworkers, apprentices, widows and orphans faced unemployment and hunger, often put down as “mobs.”

Native Nations
Indigenous lands were already being seized by the same state that crushed Shays’ farmers. Domination ran outward as well as downward.

Different groups, same system: The early American state shot the Anunnaki pattern of hierarchy, extraction, and fear through its poor, enslaved, and female inhabitants.

The Elite’s Fear: Using Shays to Justify a Stronger Top-Down State

The Philadelphia Constitutional Convention was already underway when Shays’ farmers blocked the courts. But the rebellion became a turning point.

Men like Washington, Madison, and Hamilton said openly: If poor farmers can shut down courts, the republic will collapse.

So the Constitution was shaped by fear of uprisings from 1) the Senate [insulated from popular election until 1913], 2) the Electoral College 3) A strong federal army, and Limited direct democracy.

The elite didn’t want another “Shays.” They wanted a system where popular grievances could never again shut down the machinery of wealth extraction.

The Modern Parallel: We Are All Shays Now

Today, we face another crisis of debt, poverty, and elite consolidation:

• Veterans struggling with homelessness and untreated trauma

• Tenants facing eviction by corporate landlords

• Workers crushed by gig wages and medical debt

• Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities are over-policed and under-resourced

• Families unable to pay for food, housing, or care

Different century, same dynamic:

people sacrificed so that creditors, corporations, and wealthy elites remain comfortable.

A partnership society would guarantee:

• Basic needs as rights

• Competition without coercion

• Fair distribution of power

• Restorative—not punitive—justice

• Respect for Indigenous stewardship

• Dignity for all humans, not just profitable ones

A dominator society does the opposite.

Shays’ Rebellion shows the crossroads clearly.

Conclusion: Choosing Partnership in a Domination-Made World

Shays’ Rebellion was not a tragedy of “mob rule.”

It was the first great American cry for economic justice, dignity, and security of basic needs—a cry still echoing across two and a half centuries.

We are all Shays when:

• We refuse to sacrifice our neighbors to economic ideology

• We insist that compassion is stronger than coercion

• We choose cooperation over extraction

• We build systems where no one’s child goes hungry because a creditor demands coin

Partnership can override domination—but only if we recognize the pattern, name it, and transform it.

We have been given the tools.

Now we must use them.