but he largely remained on the sidelines—albeit monitoring the situation intently. Although geographically isolated out on his farm, he was kept apprised of the nation’s struggles by the parade of visitors who came to pay homage. These uninvited guests showed up at his door just about every day, sometimes ten or twenty at a time. Whether they were friends, veterans, or curious strangers, Washington was ever polite. Seeing it as his public duty, he fed and visited with almost every one of them. The retired commander was so inundated, in fact, that he went for over a year-long stretch without a peaceful dinner alone with his beloved wife. In search of some respite, he resorted to posting inadequate signage to his estate, causing many prospective visitors to get lost on the snaking paths through the dark woods that hid Mount Vernon.13
While exhausting, these visitors kept Washington abreast of the condition of the republic. Between them, his deluge of letters, and the many newspapers he avidly read, he became “the focus of political intelligence for the new world.”14 And he was aghast to learn of the nation’s looming economic collapse. But it was not his place to interfere. He was retired. He had successfully done his part to set the nation on its course and now hoped that it would find its own way forward. While Washington passively observed, however, matters only grew worse.
The United States’ fiscal disarray fed rampant inflation. The national currency, called the Continental, became virtually worthless as Congress attempted to print the country’s way out of debt. With so many bills in circulation, the Continentals’ value plummeted and many Americans’ cash savings became worth less than the mattresses that hid them. It became common to describe something of little value as “not worth a Continental.”15 The currency was such a laughingstock that “barber-shops were papered, in jest, with the bills; and the sailors, on returning from their cruise, being paid off in bundles of this worthless money, had suits of clothes made of it, and with characteristic lightheartedness turned their loss into a frolic, by parading through the streets in decayed finery, which, in its better days had passed for thousands of dollars!”16
Rather than place blame where due—on the nation’s massive war debt and the states’ refusal to coordinate a response—citizens and leaders alike turned their wrath on merchants and creditors. Even though these shopkeepers and financiers were merely acting rationally when they refused to take payment with the worthless Continentals, they became the scapegoats for public outrage. For example, the Connecticut legislature blasted them as “evil-minded persons, inimical to the liberties of the United States of America,” who had “endeavored to depreciate the bills of credit of this and the said United States.”17 Reflecting the public anger, Washington likewise lashed out against “monopolizers, forestallers, and engrossers,” describing them as “pests of society” who should be “hanged upon a gallows.”18
With the national currency crumbling, rather than work together to return to solvency, some states turned to further emissions of their own separate currencies. This drove inflation higher and fractured national unity.19 It was an economic and political mess, as the sister states not only refused to work together, but also blamed one another like “little jealous, clashing, tumultuous commonwealths.”20 The states’ bickering took on “an ominous likeness to the meetings and resolves which in the years before 1775 had heralded a state of war.” Many ventured that it would not be long before “shots would have been fired and seeds of perennial hatred sown” among the peoples.21
Such insolvency and internal turmoil left the country perilously vulnerable to external threats. The weak young nation found itself in a world fraught with aggressors. This was an age when a renewed British assault appeared imminent. The British had already violated their peace treaty with the Americans by retaining troops on the United States’ western frontier for years after the Revolution ended. Britain made it abundantly clear that she was bitterly unwilling to relinquish her interests in America’s lands and many feared that she would soon come to collect her lost colonies. And Britain was not the only threat.
Reports abounded that Spain might prey upon the nation’s weakness to expand her New World empire. The Spanish began aggressively asserting their military might in the region by restricting America’s navigation rights on parts of the Mississippi River, thus impeding the nation’s development of its western frontier. Although humiliated and outraged by these affronts, the nation was too weak to respond. Not only was Congress too broke to pay for a national army, the government could not even fashion a united military front from among the states’ separate militias. Congress simply did not have the power under the Articles of Confederation to protect the nation.
Upon obtaining reports of his country’s deteriorating condition, Washington derided the nation as “little more than a shadow” and Congress as a mere “nugatory body.”22 The country was increasingly helpless as the major European powers licked their lips, hungrily eyeing America’s fertile territory.
The American “shadow” government was unable to reverse the nation’s descent into anarchy. This fact was made abundantly clear to Washington and the rest of the nation by a poor farmer in the Massachusetts backcountry.
Daniel Shays, the uneducated son of an Irish indentured servant, toiled on a small farm with his wife and six children. His dark, accusatory eyes, doughy chin, pug nose, and drooping jowls made him resemble a bulldog, which was a fitting match to his personality.1 A “smart, active” man with “much taste for the military,” he was a fiery veteran of the Revolution who had courageously fought in multiple decisive battles.2 But he had fallen on tough times after the war ended.
In a microcosm of the nation’s general suffering after the grand Revolution, Shays’ family was brought to the brink of financial ruin by the deep recession and rampant inflation that gripped the country. Like many other veterans, he had yet to receive his military pay and pension from the cash-strapped government and was therefore unable to pay down his debts. He lost possession of half his farmland to creditors. And he was relatively fortunate, since many of his neighbors lost everything.3 Even worse, others were carted off to jail, since any debt above a mere five dollars was cause for imprisonment. The people of Massachusetts—the hotbed of unrest that had started the Revolution just a few years earlier—were again rearing for a fight.
Reigniting his firebrand spirit and oratory, Shays led his fellow debtors in protest. The frustrated group started out peacefully, calling for debtor relief and government reform. But the financiers were unwilling to lose money on their loans and continued to go after the delinquent farmers’ lands. Unmoved by the farmers’ pleas, the Massachusetts government refused to halt the foreclosures. Instead, the state infuriated the farming communities by suggesting they exercise patience and frugality.4 From the farmers’ perspective, it was preposterous to ask them to be any more patient as their lands were confiscated. It was impossible for them to be any more frugal when they were having trouble just feeding their families.
Enraged, the protesting farmers seized local courthouses—without courts, the creditors could not foreclose on them. Meeting with success, Shays’ mob grew bolder. During the dog days of summer in 1786—barely two and a half years after the official conclusion of the Revolution—Shays donned his Continental Army uniform once again and led a crowd armed with muskets, pitchforks, and clubs to the highest court in Massachusetts. A reluctant leader who yearned to preserve peace amidst the protest, Shays negotiated the peaceful surrender of the courthouse; however, such a transgression would not go unanswered by the state.
Declaring that he would “vindicate the insulted dignity of government,” the governor of Massachusetts sent the state’s militia to confront the insurgency.5 Governor James Bowdoin was a stern-looking gentleman with a gently cleft chin, arched eyebrows, and a high, aristocratic brow framed by long, regally styled gray hair. A brilliant intellectual