The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on…
September 1786 CE
When the supreme judicial court wi next scheduled to meet in Springfield on September 26, Shays in Hampshire County and Luke Day in what is now Hampden County (but is at this time part of Hampshire County) organize an attempt to shut it down.
They are anticipated by William Shepard, the local militia commander, who had begun gathering government-supporting militia the Saturday before the court was to sit.
By the time the court was ready to open, Shepard had three hundred men protecting the Springfield courthouse.
Shays and Day have been able to recruit a similar number, but choose only to demonstrate, exercising their troops outside Shepard's lines, rather than attempt to seize the building.
Many insurgents wear their old Continental Army uniforms with a sprig of hemlock in their hat.
The judges first postpone the hearings, then adjourned on the 28th without hearing any cases.
Shepard withdraws his force, which has grown to some eight hundred men (to the Regulators' twelve hundred), to the federal armory, which is at this time only rumored to be the target of seizure by the activists