During Shays's rebellion there was a riot here in September 1786, and on the 25th of January 1787 the insurgent forces under Daniel Shays attacked the arsenal, but were dispersed by the militia under Brigadier-General William Shepard (1737-1817).
In the autumn of 1786 there was an encounter near the village of East Lee between about 250 adherents of Daniel Shays (many of them from Lee township) and a body of state troops under General John Paterson, wherein the Shays contingent paraded a bogus cannon (made of a yarn beam) with such effect that the state troops fled.
It is the key to an understanding of the times to remember that the War of Independence had disjointed society; and democracy - which Jefferson had proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and enthroned in Virginia - after strengthening its rights by the sword, had run to excesses, particularly in the Shays' rebellion, that produced a conservative reaction.
In September 1786, at the time of the Shays Rebellion, the New Hampshire Gazette (still published; daily edition since 1890) was established here in the interest of the state administration.
Early in 1787 King was moved by the Shays Rebellion and by the influence of Alexander Hamilton to take a broader view of the general situation, and it was he who introduced the resolution in Congress, on the 21st of February 1787, sanctioning the call for the Philadelphia constitutional convention.
