The glorified writers of the Federalist Papers — John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison — explicitly didn’t want mass democracy. During the Constitutional Convention, launched in spring 1787 and convened meant to hammer out the document’s details, Hamilton pushed for a president serving “during good behaviour”. In other words: an elected king enthroned for life, much like the Supreme Court. Hamilton and his friends also pushed for a congressional veto on all state legislation, in effect allowing for total national and elite-led control of local government. That was shadowed by other elitist institutions, notably the Senate and the Electoral College. Voting, too, was to be the preserve of the propertied few: discounting women, slaves, and poor white men, the franchise in the early US encompassed just 6% of the population.
The true heroes of the early US, then, were the Anti-Federalists. An everyman group of farmers, ex-soldiers, and small property holders — none of them have ever received Broadway hagiographies or had their faces plastered on dollar bills. Yet they were the families who fought and died for the Revolution, risking their lives to overthrow the British and who now expected government both by and for the people.
How did the wealthy merchants and bankers pushing for the Constitution respond? By economically destroying the little guy. Due to governmental dysfunction — and the fact the poor and propertyless were locked out of voting — a large percentage of veterans remained unpaid for years after the redcoats left. Even worse, many had mortgaged their homes and farms to finance the fight for independence, with the government promising repayment that never materialized. Little wonder these men rose up, under the former colonel Daniel Shays, to resist the injustices of debtors’ prisons and restore what they saw as the Revolution’s democratic spirit.
Not that Shays himself was some permanent rabble-rouser. Born not far from Boston, he fought at Lexington, Bunker Hill, and Saratoga, was wounded in action, and handed a ceremonial sword by none other than the Marquis de Lafayette. It’s a sword Shays was later forced to sell to cover his debts. By the autumn of 1786, the veterans and common folk of western Massachusetts had had enough. Armed bands of farmers — mostly veterans — marched on the county courthouses and shut them down by force, reasoning that a court that can’t convene also can’t foreclose on their neighbors and friends.
And so, for a few months, these insurgents effectively governed the western half of Massachusetts. The Commonwealth’s authority simply evaporated under popular pressure. Then, in January 1787, Shays led roughly 1,500 men against the federal arsenal at Springfield, aiming to seize its weapons and turn them against the state governments, which they believed had been captured by wealthy coastal merchants and big farmers. They never reached the gates. A militia — privately financed by a syndicate of Boston merchants, since the bankrupt state couldn’t afford one — met them with literal cannon fire. Four Shaysites fell dead in the snow. Upon seeing the ruthlessness with which these hired guns pursued them, some of the Shaysites are said to have died from fright. The rest scattered, before being hunted across the hills through a brutal winter.