On January 25, 1787, Daniel Shays and his insurrectionists confronted a Massachusetts state militia force outside the Springfield armory. Shays’ Rebellion had begun in the summer of 1786, when Shays, a former Continental Army captain, and other western Massachusetts veterans and farmers formed an insurrection against the government for failing to address their economic grievances. Upon the confrontation at the Springfield armory, the state militia forced Shays and his followers to retreat to Worcester County, where they would be dispersed on February 4, leading to the end of the rebellion.

On February 3, George Washington wrote to Henry Knox, conveying his thoughts on both the recent rebellion in Massachusetts and the Philadelphia Convention. Of Shays’ Rebellion, Washington wrote, “if three years ago any person had told me that at this day, I should see such a formidable rebellion against the laws & constitutions of our own making as now appears I should have thought him a bedlamite - a fit subject for a mad house.” He wrote that if the government “shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws … anarchy & confusion must prevail.”

gilderlehrman.org