After the legislature adjourned on July 18, 1786 without substantively addressing these complaints, rural Massachusetts protestors organized direct action, and began protest marches that shut down the state's court system, which enforced tax and civil forfeiture judgments and had become a focus of the discontent. Bowdoin issued a proclamation in early September denouncing these actions, but took no overt steps to immediately organize a militia response (unlike governors in neighboring Connecticut and New Hampshire). When the foreclosure court in Worcester was shut down by similar action on September 5, the county militia (composed mainly of men sympathetic to the protestors) refused to turn out, much to Bowdoin's chagrin. The closure of the Worcester court was followed by closings in Concord and Taunton, and when the militia marched into Great Barrington to force court open there, one of the Judges, William Whiting asked the militiamen to take sides. 800 of the 1,000 men took the people's side of the road. By October, one correspondent wrote, "We are now in a state of Anarchy and Confusion bordering on Civil War".