A stone marker in Great Barrington commemorates the final battle of Shays' Rebellion, the armed uprising of 1786–87 in which indebted Massachusetts farmers took up arms against a state government that was seizing their land and livestock to pay war debts while refusing to issue paper currency.
The rebellion was short-lived — federal troops dispersed the rebels here in February 1787 — but its political consequences were enormous. George Washington called it "a triumph for anarchy." The rebellion directly accelerated the Constitutional Convention that replaced the weak Articles of Confederation with the US Constitution. The modest monument sits on a Main Street corner, easily missed but historically significant out of all proportion to its size.