Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

In 1787 Shay's Rebellion, which began six months earlier in Massachusetts, was put down by twelve hundred militiamen. By the mid-1780s many rural farmers faced hard times, made worse by the unstable U.S. currency. In Massachusetts farmers blamed the mercantile elite, based in Boston. Let by Daniel Shays, armed groups of farmers began taking over local courthouses and preventing the courts from meeting, thus preventing the foreclosure of farms. In late January, 1787, two thousand rebel farmers, many wearing their Revolutionary War uniforms, attempted to capture a federal arsenal at Springfield, but failed. On February 3 and 4 the militiamen under General Benjamin Lincoln defeated the rebels.
Fourteen were later sentenced to death, but were eventually acquitted.