S hays’s Rebellion filled Alexander Hamilton with dread. In 1786, armed men shut down courts in five counties across Massachusetts and, early the next year, marched on the federal armory in Springfield. The mobs included debtors trying to prevent the courts from foreclosing on their farms, and opponents of centralized government. The insurrectionists believed that the newly adopted Massachusetts Constitution , drafted in 1779 by John Adams, would shift power from the poor to the rich, from the