Daniel Shays

Daniel Shays (1747–1825) was an American farmer and Continental Army captain, born in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, in 1747. He fought at Bunker Hill and Saratoga, but left the army unpaid and returned home to debts and tax foreclosures.

In 1786 he joined rural protesters shutting down county courts, and in January 1787 led hundreds of Regulators against the federal armory at Springfield, where militia grapeshot broke the assault.

Condemned for treason, Shays was pardoned in 1788. He later lived on a federal pension and a small plot of land, and died in New York in 1825.