Shays' Rebellion Shays's Rebellion was an armed uprising in
Western Massachusetts and
Worcester in response to a
debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes on both individuals and their trades. The fighting took place in the areas around
Springfield during 1786 and 1787. Historically, scholars have argued that the four thousand rebels, called
Shaysites, who protested against economic and civil rights injustices by the Massachusetts Government were led by
Revolutionary War veteran
Daniel Shays. By the early 2020s, scholarship has suggested that Shays's role in the protests was significantly and strategically exaggerated by Massachusetts elites, who had a political interest in shifting blame for bad economic conditions away from themselves. In 1787, the protesters marched on the federal
Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government. The federal government, severely limited in its prerogatives under the
Articles of Confederation, found itself unable to finance troops to put down the rebellion; it was consequently put down by the
Massachusetts State Militia under
William Shepard, alongside a privately funded local militia led by former
Continental Army officer
Benjamin Lincoln. The widely-held view had already developed that the Articles of Confederation were untenable and needed amending, with the events of the rebellion serving as further evidence for the later
Constitutional Convention. There is continuing debate among scholars as to what extent the rebellion influenced the later drafting and ratification of the
Constitution. Four thousand people signed confessions acknowledging participation in the events of the rebellion in exchange for amnesty. Several hundred participants were eventually indicted on charges relating to the rebellion, but most of these were pardoned under a general amnesty that excluded only a few ringleaders. Eighteen men were convicted and sentenced to death, but most of these had their sentences commuted or overturned on appeal or were pardoned. John Bly and Charles Rose were hanged on December 6, 1787. They were also accused of a common-law crime for looting. Shays was pardoned in 1788 and he returned to Massachusetts from hiding in the Vermont woods. He later moved to the
Conesus, New York area, where he died poor and obscure in 1825. The crushing of the rebellion and the harsh terms of reconciliation imposed by the Disqualification Act all worked against Governor Bowdoin politically. He received few votes from the rural parts of the state and was trounced by
John Hancock in the gubernatorial election of 1787. The military victory was tempered by tax changes in subsequent years. The legislature cut taxes and placed a moratorium on debts and also refocused state spending away from interest payments, resulting in a 30-percent decline in the value of Massachusetts securities as those payments fell in arrears. Vermont was an unrecognized
independent republic that had been seeking
independent statehood from New York's claims to the territory. It became an unexpected beneficiary of the rebellion by sheltering the rebel ringleaders.
Alexander Hamilton broke from other New Yorkers, including major landowners with claims on Vermont territory, calling for the state to recognize and support Vermont's bid for admission to the union. He cited Vermont's de facto independence and its ability to cause trouble by providing support to the discontented from neighboring states, and he introduced legislation that broke the impasse between New York and Vermont. Vermonters responded favorably to the overture by publicly pushing Eli Parsons and Luke Day out of the state (but quietly continuing to support others). Vermont became the fourteenth state after negotiations with New York and the passage of the new constitution.
Adoption of the US Constitution Thomas Jefferson was serving as ambassador to France at the time and refused to be alarmed by Shays's Rebellion. He argued in a letter to James Madison on January 30, 1787, that occasional rebellion serves to preserve freedoms. In a letter to William Stephens Smith on November 13, 1787, Jefferson wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." In contrast,
George Washington had been calling for constitutional reform for many years, and he wrote in a letter dated October 31, 1786, to
Henry Lee, "You talk, my good sir, of employing influence to appease the present tumults in Massachusetts. I know not where that influence is to be found, or, if attainable, that it would be a proper remedy for the disorders. Influence is not government. Let us have a government by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, or let us know the worst at once." , 1856 At the time of the rebellion, the weaknesses of the federal government as constituted under the
Articles of Confederation were apparent to many. A vigorous debate was going on throughout the states on the need for a stronger central government, with
Federalists arguing for the idea, and
Anti-Federalists opposing them. Historical opinion is divided on what sort of role the rebellion played in the formation and later ratification of the
United States Constitution, although most scholars agree that it played some role, at least temporarily drawing some anti-Federalists to the strong government side. By early 1785, many influential merchants and political leaders were already agreed that a stronger central government was needed. Shortly after Shays's Rebellion broke out, delegates from five states
met in Annapolis, Maryland from September 11–14, 1786, and they concluded that vigorous steps were needed to reform the federal government, but they disbanded because of a lack of full representation and authority, calling for a convention of all the states to be held in Philadelphia in May 1787. Historian Robert Feer notes that several prominent figures had hoped that the convention would fail, requiring a larger-scale convention, and French diplomat
Louis-Guillaume Otto thought that the convention was intentionally broken off early to achieve this end. In early 1787,
John Jay wrote that the rural disturbances and the inability of the central government to fund troops in response made "the inefficiency of the Federal government more and more manifest".
Henry Knox observed that the uprising in Massachusetts clearly influenced local leaders who had previously opposed a strong federal government. Historian
David Szatmary writes that the timing of the rebellion "convinced the elites of sovereign states that the proposed gathering at Philadelphia must take place". Some states delayed choosing delegates to the proposed convention, including Massachusetts, in part because it resembled the "extra-legal" conventions organized by the protestors before the rebellion became violent. The convention that met in Philadelphia then was dominated by strong-government advocates. Delegate
Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut argued that because the people could not be trusted (as exemplified by Shays's Rebellion), the members of the federal House of Representatives should be chosen by state legislatures, not by popular vote. The example of Shays's Rebellion may also have been influential in the addition of language to the constitution concerning the ability of states to manage domestic violence, and their ability to demand the
return of individuals from other states for trial. The rebellion also played a role in the discussion of the number of chief executives the United States would have going forward. While mindful of tyranny, delegates of the Constitutional Convention thought that the single executive would be more effective in responding to national disturbances. Federalists cited the rebellion as an example of the confederation government's weaknesses, while opponents such as
Elbridge Gerry, a merchant speculator and Massachusetts delegate from Essex County, thought that a federal response to the rebellion would have been even worse than that of the state. He was one of the few convention delegates who refused to sign the new constitution, although his reasons for doing so did not stem from the rebellion. When the constitution had been drafted, Massachusetts was viewed by Federalists as a state that might not ratify it, because of widespread anti-Federalist sentiment in the rural parts of the state. Massachusetts Federalists, including Henry Knox, were active in courting swing votes in the debates leading up to the state's ratifying convention in 1788. When the vote was taken on February 6, 1788, representatives of rural communities involved in the rebellion voted against ratification by a wide margin, but the day was carried by a coalition of merchants, urban elites, and market town leaders. The state ratified the constitution by a vote of 187 to 168. Historians are divided on the impact the rebellion had on the ratification debates. Robert Feer notes that major Federalist pamphleteers rarely mentioned it and that some anti-Federalists used the fact that Massachusetts survived the rebellion as evidence that a new constitution was unnecessary. Leonard Richards counters that publications like the
Pennsylvania Gazette explicitly tied anti-Federalist opinion to the rebel cause, calling opponents of the new constitution "Shaysites" and the Federalists "Washingtonians". David Szatmary argues that debate in some states was affected, particularly in Massachusetts, where the rebellion had a polarizing effect. Richards records
Henry Jackson's observation that opposition to ratification in Massachusetts was motivated by "that cursed spirit of insurgency", but that broader opposition in other states originated in other constitutional concerns expressed by Elbridge Gerry, who published a widely distributed pamphlet outlining his concerns about the vagueness of some of the powers granted in the constitution and its lack of a
Bill of Rights.
Constitutional Definition Definition: In Article III, Section 3 of the
United States Constitution, treason is specifically limited to levying war against the U.S., or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. Penalty: Under U.S. Code Title 18, the penalty is
death, or not less than five years' imprisonment (with a minimum fine of $10,000, if not sentenced to death). Any person convicted of treason against the United States also forfeits the right to hold public office in the United States. The terms used in the definition derive from English legal tradition, specifically the
Treason Act 1351.
Levying war means the assembly of armed people to overthrow the government or to resist its laws.
Enemies are subjects of a foreign government that is in open hostility with the United States. Treason does not distinguish between participants and
accessories; all persons who rebel or intentionally give aid to hostilities are subject to the same charge. Death sentences for treason under the Constitution have been carried out in only 16 instances: the executions of 15
Taos Revolt insurgents in 1847 led by
Pablo Montoya and
Tomás Romero, and the execution of
William Bruce Mumford during the
Civil War. A handful of other people convicted of the offense at the federal level – such as two militants from the
Whiskey Rebellion (John Mitchell and Philip Weigel, who were both
pardoned by President
George Washington.) and several people after
World War II – have mostly been pardoned or released. The last federal treason conviction to be fully upheld was that of Nazi sympathizer
Herbert John Burgman in 1949.
Whisky Rebellion The Whiskey Rebellion' was a violent
tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the
presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. The "whiskey tax" became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue to pay the
war debt incurred during the
American Revolutionary War. Farmers of
the western frontier were accustomed to distilling their surplus rye, barley, wheat, corn, or fermented
grain mixtures to make whiskey. These farmers resisted the tax. Throughout western Pennsylvania counties, protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting the tax. Resistance came to a climax in July 1794, when a
US marshal arrived in western Pennsylvania to serve writs to distillers who had not paid the excise. The alarm was raised, and more than 500 armed men attacked the fortified home of tax inspector
John Neville. Washington responded by sending peace commissioners to western Pennsylvania to negotiate with the rebels, while at the same time calling on governors to send a militia force to enforce the tax. Washington himself rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency, with 13,000 militiamen provided by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The leaders of the rebels all fled before the arrival of the army, and there was no confrontation. About 150 men were arrested, but only 20 held for trial in Philadelphia, and only two were convicted (eventually pardoned). Other accounts describe the indictment of 24 men for high treason. Most of the accused had eluded capture, so only ten men stood trial for treason in federal court. Of these, only Philip Wigle and John Mitchell were convicted. Wigle had beaten up a tax collector and burned his house; Mitchell was a simpleton who had been convinced by David Bradford to rob the U.S. mail. These, the only two convicted of treason and sentenced to death by hanging, were later
pardoned by President Washington. Pennsylvania state courts were more successful in prosecuting lawbreakers, securing numerous convictions for assault and rioting.
Aaron Burr treason trial The most famous treason trial, that of
Aaron Burr in 1807, resulted in acquittal. In 1807, on a charge of treason, Burr was brought to trial before the United States
Circuit Court at
Richmond, Virginia. The only physical evidence presented to the grand jury was
General James Wilkinson's so-called letter from Burr, which proposed the idea of stealing land in the
Louisiana Purchase. The trial was presided over by Chief Justice of the United States
John Marshall, acting as a circuit judge. Since no witnesses testified, Burr was acquitted in spite of the full force of Jefferson's political influence thrown against him. Immediately afterward, Burr was tried on a misdemeanor charge and was again acquitted. Burr was accused of attempting to use his international connections and support from a
cabal of American
planters, politicians, and
United States Army officers to establish an independent country in the old federal
Southwest Territory (1790–1796), south of the
Ohio River, (future states of
Kentucky,
Tennessee and the future federal
Territories of later
Mississippi Territory (1798–1817), and adjacent
Alabama Territory), and east of the
Mississippi River and north of the southern coast along the
Gulf of Mexico, or to invade / conquer the newly acquired
Louisiana Purchase of 1803, west of the
Mississippi River, later organized as the
Louisiana Territory (1804–1812), then divided into future 18th
state of
Louisiana and upper / northern portion as
Missouri Territory (1812–1821); or plotting against the northern parts of the colonial
New Spain (later
Mexico), still held by Spain; or against and seizing the
Florida peninsula of the longtime
Royal Spanish colony of
Spanish Florida, (consisting of
West Florida and
East Florida), in the
Americas /
Western Hemisphere, part of the world-wide
Spanish Empire since the early
16th century. Burr's version was that he intended to farm 40,000 acres (160 km2) in the
Spanish Texas colonial province of the
New Spain Viceroyalty which had been supposedly leased to him by the
Spanish Crown. In February 1807, former Vice President Burr was arrested on President Jefferson's orders and charged / indicted for
treason, despite a lack of firm evidence. An issue more significant than the galling daily insults was that many New Mexican citizens feared that their land titles, issued by the Mexican government, would not be recognized by the United States. They worried that American sympathizers would prosper at their expense. Following Kearny's departure, dissenters in
Santa Fe plotted a
Christmas uprising. When the plans were discovered by the US authorities, the dissenters postponed the uprising. They attracted numerous Native American allies, including
Puebloan peoples, who also wanted to push the Americans from the territory. On the morning of January 19, 1847, the insurrectionists began the revolt in Don Fernando de Taos, present-day
Taos, New Mexico and nearby
Taos Pueblo. They were led by
Pablo Montoya, a
Hispano with Taos Pueblo ancestry, and
Tomás Romero from Taos Pueblo, also known as
Tomasito (Little Thomas). Romero led a Native American force to the house of Governor
Charles Bent, where they broke down the door, shot Bent with arrows, and scalped him in front of his family. After they moved on, Bent was still alive. With his wife Ignacia and children, and the wives of friends
Kit Carson and
Thomas Boggs, the group escaped by digging through the adobe walls of their house into the one next door. When the insurgents discovered the party, they killed Bent, but left the women and children unharmed. The rebel force killed and scalped several other government officials, along with others seen as related to the new US territorial government. Among those killed were Stephen Lee, acting county sheriff; Cornelio Vigil, prefect and probate judge; and J.W. Leal, circuit attorney. "It appeared," wrote Colonel Price, "to be the object of the insurrectionists to put to death every American and every Mexican who had accepted office under the American government." The next day a large armed force of approximately 500 Hispanos and Puebloans attacked and laid siege to
Simeon Turley's mill and distillery in
Arroyo Hondo, several miles north of Taos.
Charles Autobees, an employee at the mill, saw the men coming. He rode to
Santa Fe for help from the occupying US forces. Eight to ten
mountain men were left at the mill for defense. After a day-long battle, only two of the mountain men,
John David Albert and
Thomas Tate Tobin, survived. Both escaped separately on foot during the night. The same day Hispano insurgents killed seven or eight American traders who were passing through the village of
Mora on their way to Missouri. At most 16 Americans were killed in both actions on January 20. The US military moved quickly to quash the revolt; Col. Price led more than 300 US troops from Santa Fe to Taos, together with 65 volunteers, including a few New Mexicans, organized by
Ceran St. Vrain, the business partner of the brothers William and Charles Bent. Along the way, the combined forces beat back a force of some 1,500 Hispanos and Puebloans at
Santa Cruz de la Cañada and
Embudo Pass. The insurgents retreated to
Taos Pueblo, where they took refuge in the thick-walled adobe church. During the
ensuing battle, the US breached a wall of the church and directed cannon fire into the interior, inflicting many casualties and killing about 150 rebels. They captured 400 more men after close hand-to-hand fighting. Seven US troops died in the battle. A separate force of US troops campaigned against the rebels in Mora. The
First Battle of Mora, under Captain
Israel R. Hendley, ended in a New Mexican strategic victory and Hendley's death. The Americans attacked again, under Capt.
Jesse I. Morin, in the
Second Battle of Mora and destroyed the village, which ended the Mora campaign of the revolt. The next day, US officials ordered the execution of some of the captives in the plaza in a "drumhead
court-martial", including the leader "Montojo"
Pablo Montoya. Price then set up a military court in Taos to try more of the captured insurgents under
civil law. George Bent, Charles' brother, was elected foreman of the jury. The jury included
Lucien Maxwell, a brother-in-law of Beaubien; and several friends of the Bents.
Ceran St. Vrain served as court interpreter. Since the Anglo community in Taos was small, and several men had been killed by the rebels, the jury pool was extremely limited. The court was in session for fifteen days. The jury found 15 men guilty of murder and treason (under the new US rule), and the judges sentenced them to death. An eyewitness,
Lewis Hector Garrard, described the trial and events: It certainly did appear to be a great assumption of the part of the Americans to conquer a country and then arraign the revolting inhabitants for treason. American judges sat on the bench, New Mexicans and Americans filled the jury box, and an American soldiery guarded the halls. Verily, a strange mixture of violence and justice-a strange middle ground between martial and common law. After an absence of a few minutes the jury returned with a verdict, "Guilty in the first degree". Five for murder, one for treason. Treason, indeed! What did the poor devil know about his new allegiance? ... I left the room, sick at heart. Justice! Out upon the word when its distorted meaning is a warrant for murdering those who defended to the last their country and their homes. On April 9, the US forces hanged six of the convicted insurgents in the Taos plaza; all but one were convicted of murder, with the other being hanged of treason. This was the first execution by hanging in the
Taos Valley. Two weeks later, the US forces executed five more. In all, the US hanged at least 28 men in Taos in response to the revolt. A year later, the
United States Secretary of War reviewed the case. He said that the one man hanged for treason, Hipolito "Polo" Salazar, might have been wrongfully convicted. The
Supreme Court of the United States agreed. All other convictions were affirmed.
Civil War During the
American Civil War, treason trials were held in
Indianapolis against
Copperheads for conspiring with the
Confederacy against the United States. In addition to treason trials, the federal government passed new laws that allowed prosecutors to try people for the charge of disloyalty. Various legislation was passed, including the Conspiracies Act of July 31, 1861. Because the law defining treason in the constitution was so strict, new legislation was necessary to prosecute defiance of the government. Many of the people indicted on charges of conspiracy were not taken to trial, but instead were arrested and detained. On April 25, 1862, as
Union Navy ships approached
Confederate New Orleans,
Commodore David Farragut ordered two officers to send a message to Mayor
John T. Monroe requesting removal of
Confederate flags from the
United States Custom House (New Orleans),
New Orleans Mint, and New Orleans City Hall at the
Gallier Hall building, and the replacement of Confederate flags with U.S. flags. Monroe refused, claiming it was beyond his jurisdiction. On April 26,
Capt. Henry W. Morris sent ashore Marines from the to raise the U.S. flag over the mint. Morris did so without any order from Farragut, who was still trying to receive an official
surrender from the mayor. As the Marines raised the flag, a number of locals gathered around in anger. The Marines told them that the
Pocahontas would fire on anyone attempting to remove the flag. However, a group of seven individuals, including Mumford, decided to remove the flag from the mint. The
Pocahontas fired and Mumford was injured by a flying piece of
brick. With cheers from local onlookers, he carried the flag to the mayor at city hall, but onlookers tore at it as he walked, reducing it to a stub. When accepting Lee's surrender of the
Army of Northern Virginia, at
Appomattox Courthouse, in April 1865, Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant assured all Confederate soldiers and officers a blanket
amnesty, provided they returned to their homes and refrained from any further acts of hostility, and subsequently other Union generals issued similar terms of amnesty when accepting Confederate surrenders. All Confederate officials received a blanket amnesty issued by President
Andrew Johnson on Christmas Day, 1868.
World War II , known as
Tokyo Rose, was tried for treason after World War II for her broadcasts to American troops. During the war several US citizens living in Europe were accused of treason for broadcasting
Nazi propaganda. On July 26, 1943,
Robert Henry Best,
Douglas Chandler,
Fred W. Kaltenbach,
Edward Leo Delaney,
Constance Drexel,
Jane Anderson,
Max Otto Koischwitz, and
Ezra Pound had been indicted
in absentia by a grand jury in
Washington, D.C. on charges of treason. Only Best and Chandler would later be tried and convicted of treason after the war. The rest either had the charges dropped due to a lack of evidence or dismissed due to other circumstances (Koischwitz died in a Berlin hospital in 1944, Kaltenbach reported died while in Soviet custody, and Pound (accused of being involved in Nazi and
Italian Fascist propaganda) was found unfit to stand trial.
Mildred Gillars, a German-American, along with
Rita Zucca was nicknamed "
Axis Sally" for broadcasting
Axis propaganda (Zucca, an Italian-American, had renounced her US citizenship and it was decided not to indict her for treason, but in 1946 she was convicted by an Italian
military tribunal on charges of collaboration and was released nine months later after the Italian government declared a general amnesty for collaborators). In 1949 Gillars was convicted on one count of treason. She was sentenced to 10 to 30 years in prison. She was released on June 10, 1961. In 1949,
Iva Toguri D'Aquino was convicted of treason for wartime
Radio Tokyo broadcasts (under the name of "Tokyo Rose") and sentenced to ten years, of which she served six. As a result of prosecution witnesses having lied under oath, she was pardoned in 1977. In 1952,
Tomoya Kawakita, a
Japanese-American dual citizen was convicted of treason and sentenced to death for having worked as an interpreter at a Japanese POW camp and having mistreated American prisoners. He was recognized by a former prisoner at a department store in 1946 after having returned to the United States. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. He was released and deported in 1963.
Cold War and after The
Cold War saw frequent talk linking treason with support for
Communist-led causes. The most memorable of these came from Senator
Joseph McCarthy, who used rhetoric about the
Democrats as guilty of "twenty years of treason". As chosen chair of the
Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, McCarthy also investigated various government agencies for
Soviet spy rings; however, he acted as a political fact-finder rather than a criminal prosecutor. The Cold War period saw no prosecutions for explicit treason, but there were convictions and even executions for
conspiracy to commit
espionage on behalf of the
Soviet Union, such as in the
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. On October 11, 2006, the United States government charged
Adam Yahiye Gadahn for videos in which he appeared as a spokesman for
al-Qaeda and threatened attacks on American soil. He was killed on January 19, 2015, in an
unmanned aircraft (drone) strike in
Waziristan,
Pakistan. == State ==