Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

2

Shays’ Rebellion:

A Loud and Solemn Lesson

Mount Vernon

Fairfax County, Virginia

October 12, 1785

“I’ll ride out to the front gate with you, James,” George Washington said to his young visitor upon the end of his three-day visit.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, sir,” answered thirty-four-year-old James Madison. But the look on Washington’s face indicated that this offer wasn’t simply a courtesy; his host had something more to say.

Madison, returning to his beloved Virginia from official business in Philadelphia and New York, had stopped at Mount Vernon to consult with Washington—and to vent his frustrations. The nation, the Confederation, was falling apart. The states could not agree on anything, be it taxes, a common defense, or trade either with foreign nations or among themselves. They were not so much a patchwork quilt of pieces sewn together, but thirteen shards of jagged glass, lying haphazardly upon the ground, ready to cut anyone foolish enough to try to reassemble them.

Before his visit, Madison had strongly suspected that Washington shared his concerns.

Now, Madison knew he did.

Riding out to Mount Vernon’s front gate, Washington fumed once more that a stronger national government was essential to protect everything the revolution had been fought for. Madison nodded silently in agreement, his small hand firmly on his large traveling carpetbag.

The carriage reached the gate and came to a sharp halt. Washington, limber for his fifty-three years, jumped out. Rather than saying goodbye to Madison, he instead handed him a copy of Noah Webster’s new pamphlet advocating a strong national government. “Read this,” he counseled. “We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern, act as a nation. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending it.”

George Washington’s greatest fear was that these United States would fall apart. He worried that individual states would not be able to preserve their own internal order, private property rights, or the validity of their contracts. He worried about lawlessness, anarchy, and chaos taking root in one state and then spreading across the country.

As Washington bade farewell to Madison on that crisp autumn evening, he had no way of knowing that those fears were less than one year away from becoming reality.

The Hancock Manor

30 Beacon Street

Boston, Massachusetts

Nine months earlier: January 27, 1785

“Well, there you have it!” the tall, slim man exclaimed as he finished affixing his grand, sprawling signature to the official document before him.

Though that signature read “John Hancock,” the document was not the Declaration of Independence, nor was the place Philadelphia, or the date July 4, 1776. Instead, it was nearly a decade later, and the Honorable John Hancock, looking far older than his forty-nine years, sat at a desk in Boston’s Beacon Hill and made his resignation as governor of Massachusetts official.

“That’s it!” he added for emphasis, hobbling toward the door on his gout-ridden foot. “Time to rest and get well. This body is simply worn out from service to its country. And, I suppose, service to a few other things as well!”

Everyone in the commonwealth knew very well of John Hancock’s pronounced taste for the finer things in life. Some suspected, however, that it wasn’t really gout or illness that plagued John Hancock, but rather the events occurring in Massachusetts’ rural, western areas. Farmers and townsfolk alike were angry. Personal bankruptcy cases overwhelmed the courts. Massachusetts’ state government suffered from massive debt, and its legislature, the General Court, had drastically raised property and poll taxes to pay it off.

“I wish I had gout!” Lieutenant Governor Thomas Cushing retorted. But instead of gout, Cushing now had, at least temporarily, the governorship—and all of the problems that came along with it.

“Yes, I hear you, Mr. Cushing,” Hancock answered. “There’s an anger out there. And it’s been brewing for years. Where will it end?” Hancock shook his head. Was the revolution really fought for this mess?

“I don’t blame them. Not entirely, anyway,” he continued. “The new taxes go to pay off the bonds issued during the war. But who gets the money? Not the patriots who originally bought the bonds to help secure our liberty. Or the officers and men who bled at Lexington or Concord and kept fighting on through Yorktown. No, it’s the speculators who bought the paper for pennies on the dollar. They own the bonds—and now they own the citizens of this fine commonwealth as well.”

Hampshire County Convention

Hatfield, Massachusetts

Nineteen months later: August 24, 1786

“Then, it’s agreed!”

“Of course, it’s agreed!” came the impatient retort. “We have been here for three days and we know what we want!”

This was an unruly group, with representatives from fifty towns located in western Massachusetts’ Hampshire County. They had aired their grievances and now had to present a united front against the state government in Boston. But deciding on exactly what that unified front would be was proving difficult.

Many of the men at the meeting were battle-hardened veterans of the Continental Army. One of them, Colonel Benjamin Bonney, was also acting as the meeting’s chair. “So it’s settled, then,” Bonney said. “We will send the petition to the General Court and to Governor Bowdoin.”

“Governor Bowdoin!” The name was shouted by a man in the back of the room; the words spat out as if it were Lucifer’s name itself. “That’s a waste of good Massachusetts paper! Our esteemed new governor, as we all know, is one of the biggest bondholders in the entire commonwealth. It is for him and his kind that we are bled white with taxes—so he and his Boston friends can be paid as much and as soon as possible. Yes, by all means, send our petition to King James Bowdoin—it will be fun to watch him use the paper to tally how much our taxes will increase next.”

“Tell ’em! Tell ’em!” came a rum-soaked exclamation from a young man in a threadbare coat and torn knee breeches. “Tell ’em we can’t afford to pay neither debts nor taxes. We want—we need—paper money printed and accepted for all transactions! We want no more of our money shipped to the Continental Congress! Tell ’em loud and clear: ‘To blazes with the Senate and the courts and lawyers!’ ”

“Yes, we will tell them all of that,” Colonel Bonney reassured him. “That’s what we have agreed to by the vote of all free men present.”

“And, one more thing!” came a Scotch-Irish burr-tinged demand from a man seated to Bonney’s right. “We want our demands dispatched to the conventions meeting at Worcester and Lenox as well. They’ll be very glad to hear that we Hampshire County men stand strong for our liberties.”

“Agreed, Captain Shays,” answered Colonel Bonney. “Couriers will leave in the morrow.”

And with that, Daniel Shays, a resident of nearby Pelham, tapped the residue from his simple clay pipe and took comfort in the thought that the common people—he among them—were finally standing up to the wealthy merchants and lawyers of Boston town.

Court of Common Pleas

Hampshire County Courthouse

Northampton, Massachusetts

August 29, 1786

Captain Daniel Shays had not originally cared much for protest. But now, as he stood before Northampton’s Hampshire County Courthouse and pondered the accelerating tumult around him, he quickly reconsidered that position.

Shays was approaching forty years of age and he looked every bit of it. He had been born poor, and life had not done much better by him. The little land he owned called for endless, backbreaking work and seemed to result in nothing but an increasing pocketful of debts.

Shays had earned his fine title of “captain” during the revolution, fighting at Saratoga, Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Stony Point—the last engagement under the great Marquis de Lafayette, who had bestowed upon him an elegant gold-handled sword. Shays was, by all accounts, a good soldier, but there were some things about him that rankled his fellow officers. For one thing, he had received his commission for having recruited the private soldiers who served under him, not for any actual battlefield merit. There was also the matter of that sword. Any other patriot would have treasured it, but Shays had quickly sold it to pay a twelve-dollar debt.

And there was one other thing that bothered some of the other officers: in 1780, when pay had run short and morale had run low, many—too many—of George Washington’s officers ingloriously departed for home.

Captain Daniel Shays was among them.

• • •

Five hundred men marched on Northampton from Daniel Shays’ hometown of Pelham. Another column of men, led by Captain Joel Billings, approached from Amherst. Hundreds more swaggered north from West Springfield under the leadership of Captain Luke Day, another veteran of Lexington. Still more rough-and-ready protesters streamed in from the hill towns to the west. They sported sprigs of green hemlock in their battered hats, carried flags, and marched to the sound of fifes and the threatening beat of drums. Some came outfitted with swords and flintlock muskets; others were armed with just sticks and bludgeons. But this was a real army—at least as real as the one that had appeared in Lexington in April 1775—and look what they had accomplished.

In all, fifteen hundred men had descended upon Northampton’s courthouse, where Hampshire County’s Court of Common Pleas was scheduled to be in session that morning. The sheer size of the crowd made it difficult for the three bewigged, black-robed justices and their clerk to enter the courthouse. “Allow us in,” Judge Eleazar Porter demanded. Derisive laughter rang through the crowd. “You might care to rethink that request, your honor,” snapped Captain Luke Day. “It looks like the people have a different idea about who’s meeting where and when from now on.” Day liked talking as much as he liked soldiering.

The three judges nervously conferred. After agreeing that there was no way they could force their way through this jostling, threatening mob, they retreated to a nearby inn. No cases would be heard today and no debtors or tax delinquents arraigned. Soon these judges would mount their steeds and make the wisest decision possible—to ride out of town.

It wasn’t until midnight that the mobbers finally departed from Northampton’s courthouse. They were tired but emboldened, and their actions had ignited a spark that would lead to an explosion in Pelham and, eventually, in all of western Massachusetts.

Daniel Shays’ Farmhouse

Pelham, Massachusetts

August 30, 1786

If Daniel Shays was concerned about changing his reputation, he had a funny way of doing it. The previous morning his neighbors had asked him to lead them on their march to Northampton. He refused. Fifty-year-old Deacon John Thompson took command in his place.

But, now, after a night of rest and some deep thinking, Shays was having second—and third—thoughts. Who was better suited to lead his aggrieved neighbors than he, a man as burdened by debt and Boston oppression as anyone, a patriot who had never even been paid for his wartime service?

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had been a fool to turn down his neighbor’s request. Daniel Shays resolved to step forward and lead.

Supreme Judicial Court

Hampden County Courthouse

Springfield, Massachusetts

September 26, 1786

The virus spread, hopscotching from town to town and county to county.

An epidemic had begun.

Three hundred men shut down the state’s Supreme Judicial Court when it tried to meet at Worcester. A drunken horde—men too poor to pay their debts, but not to buy rum—pulled the same trick when Middlesex County’s court convened at Concord. Mob rule struck again at Great Barrington in the Berkshires and at Taunton, south of Boston, near the Rhode Island border. Soon the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court would indict eleven protest leaders for rioting and sedition.

Today, that court was due to convene in Springfield and, with a thousand protesters, or “Regulators,” as they now called themselves, surrounding the courthouse, it looked like the pattern might repeat itself yet again.

“A fine morning for a court closing,” joked Captain Luke Day to the ex-officer standing beside him.

“Indeed,” answered Daniel Shays.

Day eyed Supreme Court justice William Cushing attempting to wade through the mob and called out to him: “No trying of debtors today! The road back to Boston lies yonder! I would advise you to take it, sir! Now!”

From around the corner another column of men approached.

Ah, reinforcements, thought Shays.

He could not have been more wrong.

The men now marching toward him were responding to a far different kind of call: that of the rule of law. They formed uneven ranks in the sun-drenched courthouse square, but they snapped to a quick and soldierly attention on a sudden call of “Halt!” from Major General William Shepard, the pudgy, fifty-year-old commander of the Massachusetts state militia. “Cannon!” he barked, and a brace of cannons quickly rolled into place. Crews scurried to put them in working order—their barrels aimed squarely at Luke Day’s poorly armed Regulators.

With the reinforcements in place, Chief Justice Cushing and his fellow judges gingerly entered the courthouse. Their victory, however, proved hollow. No business was conducted that day as not even one juror had dared run Luke Day’s gauntlet to appear for duty.

It was difficult to say who had won the day: General Shepard or Captain Day. But one thing was clear: the forces of the law had finally entered the fight—and so had Daniel Shays.

Daniel Shays’ Farmstead

Pelham, Massachusetts

October 23, 1786

“What are you writing so furiously, Daniel?” Abigail Shays asked her husband.

Daniel hesitated before answering.

General Shepard’s unexpected intervention at the Springfield courthouse the previous month had angered Daniel Shays. It did not frighten him, which might have made things easier since he would have simply retreated to his own little world and abandoned any contact with the Regulators. No, the show of force was an insult, and Daniel Shays did not like to be insulted.

“Abigail,” said Shays, “I have already put on my uniform. I think it is time to add my name to this fight for our liberties. Listen to this, it is going out to all the counties and towns that stand with us.”

Pelham, Oct. 23, 1786

Gentlemen:

By information from the General Court, they are determined to call all those who appeared to stop the Court to condign punishment. Therefore, I request you to assemble your men together, to see that they are well armed and equipped, with sixty rounds each man, and to be ready to turn out at a minute’s warning; likewise to be properly organized with officers.

When he finished, he placed his signature below his call to arms. Daniel Shays knew that he might be signing his own death warrant.

Job Shattuck’s Farmstead

Groton, Massachusetts

November 30, 1786

Governor James Bowdoin and his allies in the General Court had assumed the offensive. Tired of seeing their courthouses invaded and their tax collectors harassed, they had quickly passed a series of laws to quell the commonwealth’s festering unrest. They suspended the writ of habeas corpus for eight months and passed “An Act to Prevent Routs, Riots and Tumultuous Assemblies and Evil Consequences Thereof,” known more commonly as simply the “Riot Act.” This new law held sheriffs blameless for any fatalities inflicted against insurgents, provided for the seizure of Regulators’ lands and goods, and stipulated that miscreants be whipped thirty-nine stripes on their naked backs and suffer imprisonment for up to twelve months.

Now, three hundred horsemen, fully armed, thundered west out of Cambridge.

Their destination: Groton. Their assignment: Apprehend Captain Job Shattuck.

The fifty-year-old Shattuck, a veteran of both the American Revolution and the earlier French and Indian War, had taken the lead in organizing attacks on tax collectors by men armed with rough-hewn clubs. He’d also led the Regulators’ drunken attack on the Concord courthouse.

But Shattuck was no Daniel Shays—at least not when it came to finances.

Shays had barely a farthing to spare. Job Shattuck, on the other hand, was the wealthiest man in Groton, the owner of five hundred acres and a fine, three-story, wood-frame mansion. But Shays and Shattuck were both leaders of the insurrection brewing in Massachusetts, and that was enough for Governor James Bowdoin.

The horsemen who were now headed for Shattuck’s home were not a typical crew of besotted roughnecks. This group featured more than its share of lawyers, physicians, and merchants. Two Harvard graduates—Benjamin Hichborn and John Warren—commanded them.

They reached Shattuck’s home at daybreak.

He wasn’t there.

Having been warned by Shays of the massive force hunting him, Captain Shattuck had bolted from his home through the snowy fields leading toward the icy Nashua River. Unfortunately, he’d left too late. One of the lead horsemen, a man named Sampson Read, caught up with him. “I know you not,” Shattuck warned Read, “but whoever you are, you are a dead man.” They grappled, falling to the cold ground, tumbling toward the riverbank. Shattuck lunged to retrieve his fallen sword and make good on his threat, but Fortescue Vernon, another posse member, proved quicker. He aimed his own sword at Shattuck’s arm, but missed, the sword slipping and severing a ligament near Shattuck’s knee.

They bandaged the bleeding Shattuck and carted him off to a Boston prison cell. It seemed like quick and easy work to lock up such a troublemaker. But they would soon learn that there was a much higher price to be paid for the capture of Captain Job Shattuck.

Daniel Shays’ Farmstead

Pelham, Massachusetts

December 3, 1786

“What sort of times have we been cursed to live in, Abigail?” Daniel Shays mused to his wife as a single tallow candle flickered at his side.

Reading in the waning light of a December day was never an easy proposition. Reading the disturbing reports before him was even more difficult.

“They say Captain Shattuck has perished in his prison cell. Terrible! Dreadful! And what these savages did during his capture was pure evil! A sword through the eye of a neighbor woman! Another woman’s breast slashed. An innocent infant murdered in its cradle! The government of Massachusetts has fallen into the hands of men just as barbaric as the heathens who aligned themselves with the French against us twenty years ago! We have no choice: We must fight them!”

Abigail Shays stayed silent. She knew no words could dissuade her husband at this point. And, she thought, if these gruesome reports were true, nothing should.

But they weren’t true at all.

Job Shattuck was indeed crippled, but not dead. No women had been blinded or slashed; no infant’s life snuffed out.

The rumors were false, but that didn’t matter. They spread like wildfire through western Massachusetts—from home to home, tavern to tavern, and church to church.

People believed the lies, and people will fight for what they believe.

Major General Benjamin Lincoln’s Home

North Street

Hingham, Massachusetts

December 4, 1786

General Benjamin Lincoln hunched over his cherrywood desk in the comfortable Hingham home. His ancestors had built this house in 1637, it had seen his birth in 1733, and it was where he hoped to die—unless, of course, these “Regulators” seized it as part of the revolution they now plotted.

Lincoln had been one of George Washington’s favorite generals. He had served at Boston, Long Island, White Plains, and Saratoga. Even his surrender to British forces at Charleston, South Carolina, failed to dim Washington’s respect for the easygoing Lincoln. When the British themselves later surrendered at Yorktown, it was Lincoln, paroled from British captivity, whom Washington designated to accept Lord Cornwallis’s sword.

Lying in front of Benjamin Lincoln today was a letter sent from Mount Vernon by Washington, dated almost a month earlier. “Are your people getting mad?” Washington had asked Lincoln, displaying uncharacteristic bluntness. “Are we to have the goodly fabric, that eight years were spent in raising, pulled over our heads? What is the cause of all these commotions? When and how will they end?”

Lincoln answered that, yes, people in Massachusetts were indeed angry. “If an attempt to annihilate our present constitution and dissolve the present government can be considered as evidence of insanity—then yes, you are accurate in your descriptions.”

Lincoln paused before answering Washington’s second question—whether the government would unravel. “There is, I think, great danger that it will be so unless the current system is supported by arms. Even then, a government which has no other basis than the point of the bayonet is so totally different from the one we established that if we must resort to arms then it can hardly be said that we have supported ‘the goodly fabric.’ This probably will be the case, for there does not appear to be virtue enough among the people to preserve a perfect republican government.”

Lincoln’s answers to his former commander’s first two queries were pessimistic, but his third answer conveyed even worse news. “It is impossible for me to determine when and how things will end,” he wrote. “I see little probability that their efforts will be brought to an end and the dignity of government supported without bloodshed. Yet, once a single drop is drawn, not even the most prophetic spirit will, in my opinion, be able to determine when it will cease flowing.”

General Lincoln knew there was no easy answer. The root cause of this growing insurrection was related to state issues like debt and property rights; issues in which the federal government, operating under the Articles of Confederation, had no ability to intervene. Lincoln also knew that other states faced similar issues. If Massachusetts’ citizens could sink into such a state of disillusionment as to pick up arms against their duly elected leaders, it could happen anywhere. The mob would supplant the law and trample liberty.

And that scared him to death.

Governor’s Mansion

Boston, Massachusetts

January 4, 1787

“You asked to see me, Governor?”

General Benjamin Lincoln had rushed north from Hingham as soon as he’d received the governor’s message that morning.

“Yes, I have requested your presence, and I think you fully comprehend why,” Bowdoin said.

“The mobs?” Lincoln asked. Massachusetts’ situation had deteriorated even further in the month since he had written back to Washington. Rumors had even been circulating that the Regulators intended to attack Boston itself.

“Of course,” answered Bowdoin. “We require a larger, more reliable force than General Shepard’s militia to crush this pox.”

“That will require patriotism . . . and, of course, gold and silver,” said Lincoln, well aware of the financial difficulties the commonwealth was already suffering.

“Funds will be provided, General,” answered Bowdoin. “I have taken it upon myself to raise them privately from one hundred thirty-five of the commonwealth’s most substantial and patriotic citizens. Men who know the value of the rule of law.” What the governor did not say, but the wily Lincoln knew very well, was that these men were not merely patriotic, they also now owned the bulk of the state’s debt—most of which had been acquired at a substantial, and now very profitable, discount. The money Bowdoin raised from increased taxes went to them. Their pledge of capital to fight the rioters was motivated by their desire to ensure that the current system, which supported their wealth, remained in place.

Motivations aside, this was the solution that Lincoln had already suggested to George Washington. The commonwealth’s men of property would have to dig into their pockets to fund an armed force that would guarantee both their property and the rule of law.

And that was just fine with Lincoln.

“I’m at your service,” he said to the governor.

Continental Arsenal

Springfield, Massachusetts

January 19, 1787

A ragtag stream of ill-clad, freezing men marched through the falling snow up a steep New England hillside. They resembled white-covered scarecrows, with rags around their heads to secure their shabby three-cornered hats in place and rags bound around their feet to stave off frostbite.

“Column halt!” the man on horseback barked. “Take shelter indoors! You’ve earned it, men!”

“Damn right we have!” muttered one of the scarecrows, ice forming around his beard. “We’ve marched a good twenty miles today!”

The men were Massachusetts militia, and the person shouting orders was none other than Major General William Shepard, the same man who had rolled out the cannons in his face-off against Daniel Shays, Luke Day, and their band of Regulators at the Springfield courthouse nearly four months earlier.

Governor Bowdoin may not have possessed much faith in the commonwealth’s militia, but General Shepard still did to a degree.

A thought—no, a fear—had raced through Shepard’s mind for months. Springfield possessed more than a courthouse; it also possessed a Continental Arsenal, chock-full of everything an army might need: 7,000 muskets and bayonets, 1,300 pounds of gunpowder, and 200 tons of shot. These supplies could transform a disorganized rabble into a formidable army capable of marching right to the State House in Boston.

If the mobs seized that arsenal, Shepard’s men would be cut to ribbons against them. So might General Lincoln’s new contingents. If they made it all the way to Boston and overtook the State House . . . well, he couldn’t even bring himself to think what might happen then.

And that was why William Shepard was marching his men through snow, ice, and cold to seize and secure that arsenal before Shays and Day finally thought of it.

But Shepard was already too late.

Daniel Shays and Luke Day had thought of it.

Parsonage of the First Church of West Springfield

West Springfield, Massachusetts

Four months earlier: September 1786

Even the most agitated of the Regulators grappled with the question: could their rebellion really succeed? Those who thought it could were left with another question even more difficult to answer: Was this rebellion just?

The Regulators certainly had their grievances. Boston called the tune, and the rest of the state danced to it. Restrictive property ownership regulations kept good men from serving in public office. Squalls and storms often kept western Massachusetts representatives away from the capitol during key legislative votes. Still, this was not 1775 or 1776. There was representation now, imperfect as it might be.

Was it right to rebel against a lawful, elected government? Should our fight be in the State House instead of the streets?

The questions gnawed at Luke Day, and that is why he found himself seeking out the Reverend Dr. Joseph Lathrop, minister of West Springfield’s First Church. Lathrop was a man Day respected and trusted. So, after finding him at the church, Day shared a secret: He and his men were going to march on the arsenal across the Connecticut River in Springfield, seize it, and kick over the whole rotten cabal in Boston.

“You’re wrong, Luke,” Lathrop said.

“Well . . . no . . . I . . . I’m . . . not!” Day stammered, fidgeting with the brass buttons on his uniform coat as he spoke.

“You’re wrong,” chided the white-haired Lathrop, jabbing a bony finger into Day’s chest, “and you know it. Your very manner tells me you know it. A resort to arms for supposed grievances is wrong. And your men know it, too. The path down which you lead them will destroy them—and you as well. If you refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword.”

The conversation ended abruptly, there was not even a terse good-bye, but Lathrop’s words had found their mark. Luke Day might never admit it, but he was having second thoughts.

Daniel Shays’ Headquarters

Wilbraham, Massachusetts

January 24, 1787

Armies were on the march.

General Benjamin Lincoln had quickly assembled an army at Roxbury and was bringing it toward Springfield via Worcester. But the Regulators were marching, too. Three separate groups of them raced against time to head off Lincoln and seize the arsenal from General Shepard’s militia: Luke Day’s 400 men advanced from West Springfield; Captain Shays’ nearly 1,200 Regulators encamped near Palmer; and 400 Berkshire County men, led by Eli Parsons, another Revolutionary War veteran, marched from Chicopee. Combined, they had a huge size advantage over Shepard’s 1,100 men.

Shays hurriedly dispatched orders to Day and Parsons: rendezvous with him before the arsenal in the waning sunlight at 4:00 P.M. on Thursday, January 25.

The clock was ticking. Seize the arsenal before Benjamin Lincoln arrived to reinforce Shepard’s militia or do not seize it at all.

Zenas Parsons’ Tavern

Springfield, Massachusetts

January 24, 1787

The atmosphere in the normally sleepy town of Springfield was electric. From the snow-covered streets to the handful of businesses that dotted its commercial area, a sense of excitement and dread filled the town. Nowhere was this sense of foreboding greater than at Zenas Parsons’ Tavern.

While some towns had flocked to the Regulators’ cause, Springfield was not counted among them. Its citizenry had stubbornly held loyal to their elected government. They had no appetite for seizing courthouses or marching on arsenals.

They also, like most people across the states, carefully scrutinized strangers stopping at the local taverns, especially in times of rebellion and sedition like the one they found themselves in now.

“Who’s the bumpkin that just sauntered in?” whispered a man attired in brown. It was a cold night and he was wisely sitting near the blazing fireplace.

“Can’t say I know,” came the answer from a bearded man in blue. “But I do reckon that he came into town on the West Springfield road.”

His companion nodded wisely. Zenas Parsons’ newest customer wasn’t from these parts, and West Springfield was where Luke Day’s “troops” were quartered. One didn’t need to be Ben Franklin to figure out what that might mean.

The man in brown sauntered over to the tavern keeper to refresh his drink. While waiting, he engaged the curly-haired stranger in conversation. “Terrible day to be out,” he said.

“That’s why I’m in here. A little grog never hurt anyone in this weather—nor in any other sort of weather!” the stranger laughed.

“No, not at all,” said the man in blue, who was now standing on the stranger’s other side. “Hope you don’t have much further to go. Otherwise, you’ll need two glasses of grog!”

“No, not far. Just over to Wilbraham.”

Wilbraham was where Shays was encamped.

“Say,” said the man in blue, “it looks like the wind’s picking up out there. I wouldn’t head outside until it lets up. Maybe another ration of grog will do the trick—on me! We like to treat strangers proper here in Springfield.”

Several grogs later, the stranger was . . . groggy. A few more and he slumped over unconscious.

Quickly, the locals pawed through his coat. There, inside his pocket, was an envelope sealed securely with red wax.

A peek inside might very well be worth the price of a few glasses of grog.

Boston Post Road

Five miles from Springfield

January 25, 1787

“There’s a rider coming forward, sir . . . I think . . .”

“Yes, I think so, too,” answered Daniel Shays, though the descending snow made seeing anything a winter’s guessing game.

“Do you measure him as friend or foe, sir?”

Shays, at the head of his column of men, pulled his spyglass up to his eye. “Both.”

“Both, sir? How may that be?”

“Friend once. But now, I doubt it. It’s Captain Samuel Buffington. I served with him in the Massachusetts Line. I rather doubt he is here to discuss old times.”

Under cover of a gust-driven white flag of truce, Buffington advanced steadily toward his erstwhile comrade. Before reaching Shays, however, another Regulator intercepted him. “You want to see General Shays, I suppose.” Buffington indicated he certainly did.

“Be my guest,” came the reply. “Just know that if the matter isn’t settled by sunset, New England will see such a day as she never has before.”

Such arrogant chatter failed to frighten Buffington. As he continued toward Shays, he wondered who had promoted the man to such an exalted rank. When he saw Shays’ own greeting—a pistol in one hand, a drawn sword in the other—he got the feeling that these mobbers were taking themselves a little too seriously.

Two can play this game, he thought. Buffington’s first words virtually slapped Shays across the face. “I’m here,” he pronounced, “in defense of the country you are endeavoring to destroy.”

“If you are in defense of the country,” Shays shot back, “then we are both defending the same cause.”

“I expect we have differing views on what that means,” Buffington countered.

“Let me be clear, then: we are taking the arsenal and public buildings in Springfield.” Shays’ bravado was overflowing, but his swagger suddenly abated. “Will they fight?” he asked, his eyes narrowing with concern.

“You can count on it,” said Buffington.

“That’s all I want,” Shays lied, as he wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck. Despite his restored bluster, he wondered whether a woolen scarf might not be the only thing wrapped round his neck in the near future.

Buffington thought the same thing. “If you advance,” he warned Shays, “you will meet those men we are both accustomed to obey.”

Buffington rode away, hoping for the best, but more fearful than ever that the worst was yet to come.

Continental Arsenal

Springfield, Massachusetts

January 25, 1787

William Shepard paced nervously, awaiting Buffington’s return. Would he bear news of Shays’ capitulation? No, that was too much to hope for. These mobbers would have to be brought to reason not by cool words but with hot lead.

A militia member approached Shepard with a piece of paper. “General, a message . . . from Captain Day.”

Shepard slowly removed his kidskin gloves and unfolded the document handed him. “Headquarters,” it began, “West Springfield, January 25, 1787.”

“Headquarters!” Shepard snorted, “You would think that loudmouth brigand would at least see combat before assuming such airs. I know damned well where his ‘Headquarters’ is—it’s the ‘Stebbins Tavern,’ a place better suited to commanding bottles than battles.”

Shepard read on:

The body of the people assembled in arms, adhering to the first principles in nature, self-preservation, do, in the most peremptory manner, demand:

1. That the troops in Springfield lay down their arms.

2. That their arms be deposited in the public stores, under the care of the proper officers, to be returned to the owners at the termination of the present contest.

3. That the troops return to their homes upon parole.

Your Excellency’s most obedient, humble servant,

Luke Day.

Captain Commandant of this division.

Shepard sighed. This game would be funny if it were not so deadly: neighbors firing on neighbors, a state torn asunder, and a braggart in a tavern issuing orders to a lawfully elected government.

We’ll see soon enough, Shepard thought, just who tenders parole to whom.

• • •

“Company’s right on time,” William Shepard muttered. “Very polite of them.”

He watched a small parade of men struggling through massive snowdrifts on the Boston Road growing larger and larger still.

“Captain Buffington, Colonel Lyman, will you do the honors? Ask them what they want—for posterity’s record.”

“My pleasure, General,” said Lyman. Both Lyman and Buffington quickly ascended their mounts to meet Shays’ advancing Regulator forces. If Shepard’s militia could not yet see “the whites” of the mobbers’ eyes from the arsenal, they could easily see their steamy breath.

Buffington posed Shepard’s question to Shays, who promptly answered, “Barracks and stores.”

The Regulators pushed forward and were just about a hundred yards from the arsenal’s heavily guarded perimeter when Colonel Lyman warned, “Advance no further or you will be fired upon.”

“That’s all we want, by God!” jeered Captain Adam Wheeler, a French and Indian War veteran who stood stoutly at Shays’ side. Lyman nodded to Buffington, and the two galloped as fast as they could back to their lines.

“Take the hill on which the arsenal and the Public Buildings stand!” Shays shouted to his troops, who responded with a great roar. If noise and enthusiasm could seize the arsenal, it would soon be theirs.

While Shays was marching his men up the Boston Road on one side of the arsenal, Eli Parsons’ Berkshire County lads were attacking on another and Luke Day was bringing his men to bear from a third side. They hoped that their enormous show of force would force Shepard to fold.

But something or rather someone was missing.

Where was Day?

Shays pondered the problem as his men inched perilously closer to Shepard’s muskets.

• • •

William Shepard’s prized possession on this late January afternoon was not either of his cannons—“government puppies,” his men called them—but a piece of paper hidden within his red-trimmed blue greatcoat. It was the letter commandeered the day before from a drunken messenger at Parsons’ Tavern, a critical communication from Luke Day to Daniel Shays.

Day had been attempting to respond to Shays to inform him that he would not be available to assault General Shepard and the arsenal at 4:00 P.M. on January 25—this very hour—but that they would instead cordially arrive precisely twenty-four hours later.

And, so, Shepard knew—though he took the precaution of posting some men on Main Street in case Day changed his mind—that he would have to defend only two sides of the arsenal, not three.

Just as important, Daniel Shays did not know that.

“Major Stephens!” roared Shepard, “Fire o’er the rascals’ heads!”

Two fuses burned, and Shepard prayed that such a warning might bring his opponents to their senses. Not merely for their sake, but for his as well. He had no way of really knowing how his own men might react to drawing the blood of their neighbors and fellow countrymen. His own army, he fretted, might dissolve at the first shot.

BOOM! . . . BOOM!

A great, deafening roar rose from the arsenal as two cannonballs sailed safely over the heads of Shays’ advancing hordes.

Or had they sailed safely? Most of Shays’ army lay prone, facefirst, on the snowy ground, as if they were a field of harvested wheat.

One by one, Shays’ army arose and dusted themselves off. “March on! March on!” Shays barked.

“Major Stephens,” Shepard ordered, his words catching in his throat as he uttered them, “Another volley—this time waist height.”

BOOM! . . . BOOM! The cannons crashed again.

Stephens’ cannon shot found its target, ripping through Shays’ ranks, tearing through blood, sinew, and bone like a sword through a sack of flour.

Three men—Ezekiel Root and Ariel Webster, both of Gill, and Jabez Spicer of nearby Leyden—crumpled to the ground dead. A fourth, Shelburne’s John Hunter, was gravely injured. The vast remainder of Shays’ troops, save for a scattered handful frozen in fear, again fell prostrate to the snow-packed ground.

“Again!” cried Shepard, and more metal rocketed through the leaden sky. But above that roar, the men manning the arsenal’s guns heard a scream that shocked them to their very marrow. Artillery Sergeant John Chaloner had moved away too slowly from his cannon’s mouth. Its fearsome blast ripped both of his arms from their sockets and its searing flash blinded him instantly.

The sound of Chaloner’s screams echoed along with the distant rumble from the cannon. The air was thick with gunpowder, and the snow where the ill-fated group of now-dead rebels once stood was red with blood.

Militiamen watched as the Regulators retreated. After they had fallen back to a safe distance, the militiamen inched down to where the army had stood facing them just a few short minutes earlier. They retrieved the mortally wounded John Hunter and what was left of Root, Webster, and Spicer, and moved them to a nearby stable, where the bodies quickly froze solid.

About an hour later, a party of Regulators advanced again, but this time under a white flag.

“Sir, we respectfully request that we may remove the bodies of our five comrades for decent Christian burial.”

“Five?” snorted Shepard. “I’m afraid I’ve only four, but if you care to repeat your march on the arsenal, I’ll be only too glad to accommodate you with a fifth!”

They were not about to take him up on that. The thought of fighting their friends and neighbors was one thing; watching them actually die was another thing entirely.

The battle was over.

Regulator Encampment

Chicopee, Massachusetts

January 26, 1787

Daniel Shays’ men had run from the armory grounds and they kept on running hard for five miles until finally reaching Japhet Chapin’s Tavern at Cabotville to Springfield’s east. At daybreak they fled farther—to Chicopee—where they rejoined Eli Parsons’ Berkshire County men. Along the way, two hundred Regulators had deserted the cause.

A roaring fire had once threatened to engulf the entire commonwealth, and, with it, perhaps the entire Confederation.

But now that fire seemed to be nothing but dying embers.

Continental Arsenal

Springfield, Massachusetts

January 27, 1787

“They’re back!”

A militia sentry watched a column of men steadily advancing toward him.

Men sprang to their posts. If Shays and his mobbers were foolish enough to attempt another attack on Springfield’s arsenal, they would ensure that an even bloodier price was paid.

“Hold your fire!” came another shout. “It’s not Shays! It’s General Lincoln and reinforcements!” Glorious in their strength and number—three companies apiece of infantry and artillery, plus a company of cavalry—Lincoln marched them steadily along.

A great cheer went up, but General Shepard cut them short. He mounted the steps of the arsenal’s wooden barracks and barked out: “Make your huzzahs short, men! Prepare your kits and your mounts. We leave within the hour—north bound, on the trail of the mobbers!”

Connecticut Valley

Western Massachusetts

January 30, 1787

General Benjamin Lincoln’s men crossed the Connecticut River, marching northward along its west bank. His cavalry, under Colonel Gideon Barr, advanced gingerly upon its ice-hardened surface. General Shepard’s militia trudged up the Connecticut’s eastern shore.

Lincoln and Shepard moved fast, but the dispirited Regulator force moved faster, bolting out of Chicopee. Those who remained plundered several houses in South Hadley and looted two barrels of rum at Amherst. More men deserted along the way. It seemed now as though only a couple hundred remained. Shays himself retreated to his ramshackle Pelham homestead. Ensconced among his fellow hardscrabble Scotch-Irish neighbors, Shays bided his time. Unsure of his next move, and burdened with an “army” more inclined to shouting than shooting, his options had grown ever more limited.

This was not at all what he had planned.

Luke Day remained in West Springfield. He’d taken the precaution of posting a guard at the ferry house, but when Lincoln’s army approached, the guard, along with the bulk of his panic-stricken men, had fled, abandoning their supplies and muskets so they might run that much faster. They fled through Southampton, and then Northampton, as quickly as they could, hoping they might find refuge in the Independent Republic of Vermont before Lincoln found them.

Major General Lincoln’s Headquarters

Hadley, Massachusetts

January 30, 1787

Benjamin Lincoln was encamped at Hadley, barely ten miles to Shays’ west. Lincoln could have advanced on him at Pelham, but chose not to. The township was too rugged and too heavily defended—swarming with the greatest concentration of “Shaysites” known to Christendom.

Benjamin Lincoln would not attack Pelham. At least, not yet.

Instead, he sat down to compose a letter. Perhaps, he thought, blessed reason might finally work to end this unfortunate episode and an offer of mercy might go further than a twelve-pound cannon shot.

And so, in a fine hand, he wrote to Captain Shays.

Whether you are convinced or not of your error in flying to arms, I am fully persuaded that you now realize that you are not able to execute your original purposes. Your resources are few, your force inconsiderable, and hourly decreasing from the dissatisfaction of your men. You are in a post where you have neither cover nor supplies, and in a situation in which you cannot hesitate for a moment to disband your deluded followers.

If you do not disband, I must approach and apprehend your most influential men. Should you attempt to fire upon the troops of Government, the consequences must be fatal to many of your men, the least guilty. To prevent bloodshed, you will communicate to your privates, that, if they will instantly lay down their arms, surrender themselves to Government, and take and subscribe the oath of allegiance to this Commonwealth, they shall be recommended to the General Court for mercy.

If you should either withhold this information from them, or suffer your people to fire upon our approach, you must be answerable for all the ills which may exist in consequence thereof.

Well, Lincoln sighed, let’s pray that that works.

Regulators’ Headquarters

William Conkey’s Tavern

Pelham, Massachusetts

January 30, 1787

Daniel Shays figured that if he had to hide out from General Lincoln’s army, old William Conkey’s Tavern, remote even by Pelham standards, was as good a place as any.

Particularly when the fugitive was also its most distinguished patron: Daniel Shays.

Gone were the days when Shays exhorted his “troops” with vain or glorious boasts. “My boys,” he had lectured them not long before, “you are going to fight for liberty. If you wish to know what liberty is, I will tell you: It is for every man to do what he pleases, to make other folks do as you please to have them, and to keep folks from serving the devil.”

If that was the definition of liberty, then these men were experiencing the opposite. Few at Pelham were now doing what pleased them—instead they hunkered down to defend their very homes.

Shays pondered Lincoln’s offer. He didn’t particularly like his opponent’s tone or his threats, but an offer of pardon had its charms. Except, and here Shays read very, very carefully, the offer clearly extended only to noncommissioned recruits. That didn’t do much for him or for his fellow officers like Adam Wheeler. A “general pardon” would be necessary. Until then, it was best to stall for time.

Pelham, Jan. 30th, 1787

To Gen. Lincoln, commanding the Government troops at Hadley,

Sir: However unjustifiable the measures we have adopted in taking up arms against the government, we have been forced to do so. The people are willing to lay down their arms, on the condition of a general pardon, and return to their respective homes. They are unwilling to stain the land, which we, in the late war, purchased at so dear a rate, with the blood of our brethren and neighbors.

Therefore, we pray that hostilities may cease on your part, until our united prayers may be presented to the General Court, and we receive an answer. If this request may be complied with, the government shall meet with no resistance from the people, but let each army occupy the post where they are now.

Daniel Shays, Captain.

Well, Shays sighed, let’s pray that that works.

It didn’t.

Major General Lincoln’s Headquarters

Hadley, Massachusetts

February 3, 1787

General Benjamin Lincoln was not about to let Daniel Shays off so easily. He didn’t trust Shays to not go back on his word and attack his army. Nor did he trust that Shays would not fade away into the hills to fight a guerilla war against the government.

But, above all, Lincoln didn’t trust his own army’s ability to play a waiting game against these blasted Regulators.

My army is falling apart! Lincoln thought to himself as he finished reading a dispatch from Major General John Paterson, his commander in the Berkshires. The antigovernment “frenzy,” Paterson reported, infested the regions bordering New York and made him fear for his safety. He was demanding reinforcements.

“General,” Lincoln’s cavalry commander, Colonel Burt, interrupted, “I must have a word with you. I was unable to send out patrols again tonight . . . the rate of desertions is simply too high.” The normally mild-mannered Lincoln flung Patterson’s letter to the floor. “Desertions! Those madmen in the Berkshires!” he screamed. “And discipline is breaking down. Looting even here in Hadley—by my own men! Damn it, this has to end!”

Both armies—the government’s and the Regulators’—were quickly collapsing. Lincoln’s militia enlistments would expire in late February. Victory now seemed to be a question of which side would dissolve first.

How, thought Lincoln, am I going to explain this to Governor Bowdoin? Or to General Washington?

“General Lincoln?” a snow-covered lieutenant interrupted.

“What do you want?” Lincoln snapped.

“Uh . . . we’ve . . . we’ve learned that Shays has evacuated his Pelham stronghold and has reached Petersham for the night.”

“Petersham? Where in tarnation is that?”

“It’s about thirty miles northeast of here, toward Gardner.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Lincoln suddenly, very softly and calmly. A plan welled inside him. “Gentlemen, alert the troops, we are headed for Petersham . . . tonight . . . now!”

“Now?” stammered Colonel Burt. “It’s nearly eight o’clock. We’d have to travel through the night—and in the most hostile territory.”

“All the better to march by night, then,” answered Lincoln. “Our enemies will slumber peacefully and wake to some very unwelcome company.”

En Route to Petersham

New Salem, Massachusetts

February 3, 1787

General Lincoln and his troops had set off late but in fair weather. At 2:00 A.M., however, and about halfway to Petersham, that changed quickly: Veritable blizzard descended upon them. Temperatures dropped, sheets of snow drifted, and the wind blew so violently that it blinded his caravan. Soon frostbite struck.

Lincoln’s men wondered what sort of madman had delivered them into such disaster, but they kept marching. They had no real choice.

Regulator Encampment

Petersham, Massachusetts

February 4, 1787

The weather was equally horrid at Petersham: freezing temperatures with near zero visibility. Daniel Shays’ men may have shivered, but at least they shivered with a temporary sense of security. No one would dare attack them in this weather. Only a lunatic would dispatch an army in such conditions. Plus, it was now the Sabbath—a day of peace, when armies sheathed their swords and knelt in prayer. They rested without fear and without nearly enough sentries to warn them that trouble approached.

At 9:00 A.M. it was not merely trouble that approached, it was mayhem.

• • •

The sun had long since risen, but many Regulators still slumbered, catching up on the sleep that had been so hard to come by lately. Others tarried at breakfast. Suddenly, Shepard’s militia burst upon them, easily pushing past the few sentries on duty and into the rebel camp, catching its inhabitants totally by surprise.

“Militia!” came the shout, as men scrambled to retrieve their unloaded muskets.

Then, a more frightened alarm shattered the morning’s bitter cold air: “Artillery!”

Somehow, Shepard and Colonel Barr’s frostbitten men had dragged with them two heavy field pieces. These were now squarely aimed at the Regulators. “Cannon!” cried the surprised men. Their screams brought back visions of the bloody debacle that had visited them at the arsenal, of lead tearing through flesh, and of Ezekiel Root, Ariel Webster, Jabez Spicer, and John Hunter, all dead or dying upon the frozen Springfield ground.

Once again, the former mobbers fled without firing a shot. Panic-stricken, they simply ran for their lives, though some did not run fast enough. Lincoln took 150 of them—mostly privates—prisoner. They had little will to resist further, but Lincoln had no manpower to waste guarding them. He let most go home on parole.

Daniel Shays and Adam Wheeler did run fast enough, north on the Athol Road. Dreams of capturing Boston had long since left their minds; they now thought only of finding asylum in Vermont.

The Meetinghouse

Lenox, Massachusetts

December 6, 1787

“Attention!”

The guards at Lenox’s Meetinghouse snapped to strict attention, and so did the 250 spectators present.

After all, they were there for serious business.

The rebellion had not formally died after Petersham, but it had been mortally wounded. Some skirmishing continued and some looting and hostage-taking here and there, primarily at Stockbridge, near the New York border. In late February, some real fighting had finally occurred in Sheffield: five men—three Regulators, a hostage they had taken, and a militiaman—were killed, and 30 others were wounded. Colonel John Ashley’s local militia captured another 150 rebels.

Some in Boston thirsted for vengeance against the Shaysites. Leading the charge was one of John Hancock’s oldest enemies and one of the revolution’s most ardent patriots, Samuel Adams. “In monarchies,” Adams argued, “the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished. But the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.”

But most people simply wanted the door closed on the whole sorry episode. From Paris, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend, asking, “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

In the end, Shays, Day, Shattuck, all of their fellow insurgent officers, and nearly all of their men, received pardons. Their blood would not be shed.

But not everyone proved so lucky.

• • •

The drums beat a dirge, and the crowd stood bareheaded and silent as two young men stood side by side upon Lenox’s rude gallows. Stout nooses were fixed upon their necks: twenty-two-year-old John Bly, a “transient” of Tyringham, and Charles Rose, a Suffolk laborer and occasional teacher in his early twenties.

They might have been tried and sentenced for treason, insurrection, or sedition, but the authorities had decided otherwise. These two rebels would instead hang for a robbery committed at Lanesboro in the waning, sputtering days of the rebellion, when armies no longer marched and the most valiant protests the rebellion mounted were burglaries.

Bly and Rose, foolishly deluding themselves into believing that Shays would invade Massachusetts from exile in Vermont, had stolen weapons and powder at Lanesboro to facilitate Shays’ phantom attack. Now they stood trembling upon the gallows. John Hancock, miraculously healthy enough to return to the governorship now that the worst had past, had rejected their petitions for mercy. Stephen West, pastor of the First Congregational Church in nearby Stockbridge, ministered to the condemned but had little good to say of them. “As you have set yourselves against the community,” he scolded, “so the community now sets themselves against you.”

Bly and Rose, scapegoats for a stillborn rebellion, and a deadly warning to anyone else who might still harbor similar sentiments, had one privilege left to them: a few last words. The English-born Bly, his voice choking with emotion, chose not to condemn those about to execute him, but instead those firebrands whose angry words and reckless deeds had enticed men like him into this misbegotten adventure. “Our fate,” he cried, “is a loud and solemn lesson to you who have excited the people to rise against the government.”

A constable placed a hood over Bly’s head, and another over Rose’s. Two traps sprang. A pair of bodies plummeted downward, and the necks of two very young Regulators loudly and sickeningly snapped.

Shays’ Rebellion was over, now as cold and dead as the two young burglars hanging in Lenox.

• • •

Far to the south, upon the fertile banks of Virginia’s Potomac River, George Washington was done with his duties of chairing a convention in Philadelphia. He continued to ponder what other lessons—besides Bly’s dying testament—might be learned from this botched rebellion.

America, he knew, required a federal government strong enough to resist the kind of lawlessness that had erupted in Massachusetts. The new Constitution he had played a vital role in drafting would be necessary to protect both the government and the governed.

He hoped that James Madison, his new friend, who was now on his way to the Virginia Ratification Convention in Richmond, might be able to help him finally achieve this goal. Virginia’s vote would be crucial in deciding whether the new Constitution would succeed or fail. If it failed, Washington feared that the chaos that had briefly bubbled to the surface in Massachusetts would grow into a roaring boil and scorch the entire Union.