Understanding past events comes from the edges, the ...



“... unwilling to stain the land . ..”*

(*Capt. Daniel Shays to General Benjamin Lincoln, January 30th, 1787)

Conflict and ambivalence in Shays’s Rebellion

by Richard Colton, Historian, US NPS

Springfield Armory NHS

One Armory Sq., Ste. 2

Springfield, MA 01105-1299

January 25th, 2007

The militia, about 800 in ranks and well-armed, stood their ground awaiting the advance of the insurgents, of like number, under the command of Captain Daniel Shays nearly three-quarters of a mile up the road leading into Springfield. Massachusetts militia Major General William Shepherd, described by those who saw him that day as “an active, cool, brave, and deserving officer,”[1] commanded and held a field piece at the ready before him in full view should the rebels advance in earnest. The Regulators, known as rebels, insurgents, or disaffected by those who opposed them, were poorly armed with no artillery to match the militia’s. Nearly half the insurgents, according to one observer, were “armed with muskets, but very few of them with bayonets, the rest with clubs, billets of wood, etc.”[2]

Three days passed before the Supreme Judicial Court adjourned and the insurgents dissipated that Thursday, September 22nd, 1786. General Shepherd had, the previous Saturday, crafted a warning note to Massachusetts Governor Bowdoin concerning rumors of possible rebel interest in the unguarded Federal arsenal on nearby Continental Hill.[3] Four months later, January 26th, on another Thursday, Shepherd’s fears were be realized when he would report to Governor Bowdoin that “[T]he unhappy time is come in which we have been obliged to shed blood.”[4]

Much has been written (and recently portrayed in film!) that describe that January 25th incident as a clash of arms. Such descriptions, though in conformity with the justifications given by state leaders for the bloody price paid by the rebels on January 25th, 1787, are, however, at variance with the testimonies and accounts of witnesses and participants. The only gunfire was that of the defending militia's artillery tearing into the rebel column - a column of men that never fired a musket or deployed for battle. The rebels, it appears, anticipated overrunning the Arsenal without serious conflict as they had the court houses in earlier protests, i.e., through a combination protest/military march and show of force empowered by a righteous cause. Their ambivalence to the likelihood of battle was matched, in turn, by that of many in the defending militia.

Accounts by participants of that day were later made in an effort to rationalize and explain the tragedy of bloodshed among neighbors and within communities . . . most often recorded by the victors in their reports to state and federal officials. Few such accounts by the rebels, scattered and defeated as they were, have survived. Secondary and tertiary descriptions, including George Richards Minot’s 1788 History of the Insurrections in Massachusetts written shortly after the event, continue to form our own lens into the past. As well, the central role of the rebellion in the formation of opinion supporting a strengthened federal constitution just a few months later continues to echo among us today who live in a nation looking to that same well-thumbed document for some sense of our present order . . . and feared disorder.

A Clash of Arms

About Noon, Thursday, January 25th, 1787, marching west on Boston Road toward Springfield, the 1,200 to 1,400 armed rebels formed a column broken into separate platoons of eight men across as they came within sight of the defending militia at a distance of between 500 and 1,000 yards.[5] The weather was described as cold with about three feet of snow on the ground to the north.[6] Two months earlier, a blizzard, one of several, had covered the land.[7] About that time, Shays and more than 1,000 fellow Regulators had left Worcester and marched to Rutland, seeking the old barracks there that saw use during the Revolutionary War. Joined by Luke Day, of West Springfield, with about 200 men, the rebels found they were forced to billet some men among nearby inhabitants. Clearly, the rebels needed shelter for so large a force. To that end, Shays marched his men to Springfield’s Continental Hill, as Springfield Arsenal was sometimes referred to, with its large stores of military equipment and unused barracks. Meeting Joshua Woodbridge of Northfield, as the column approached Springfield that morning; Captain Shays enquired whether Woodbridge knew if there was enough room in the barracks for all his men.[8] Woodbridge confirmed that there likely was room, to which Shays stated that it was his intention to lodge there that night. Woodbridge, who had just come from Springfield, then warned of the danger posed by the defending militia. But Shays was confident in his troops. The Regulator’s desire for barracks seems to have been understood, as well, by no less than Major General William Shepherd, himself, as he awaited the rebel column.[9]

The new moon was less than a week old.[10] For several hours the insurgent column halted while several militia officers rode out from their defensive positions to parlay with the rebel leaders. Warned that they would be fired upon if they marched, the rebel leaders spurned the defenders’ warning and prepared to advance. The time of waiting passed for reinforcements of about 700 more men from West Springfield, under the command of Capt. Luke Day, to support the attack. Unknown to Shays’s Regulators, Day’s message informing them that the West Springfield force had no expectation of action this day was intercepted by the militia standing before them.[11] Luke Day also sent Shepherd a letter earlier in the day demanding the militia’s immediate surrender.[12] Duty-bound as the senior Massachusetts military officer present, Shepherd remained unmoved.

Among the rebel leaders supporting Capt. Luke Day was Moses Sash of Worthington and Cummington, described in his indictment two months later as “a Captain & one of Shaizes Councill”[13] and an African American. Sash likely experienced the rebellion with hopes of righting social inequities beyond economic and class issues to include historical racial oppression. And, like so many of his comrades, he has served as a Continental Army soldier in the Revolutionary War. Sash, 27 years old, described as 5’ 8” tall with black skin and eyes and wooly black hair, was a farmer who had moved to Cummington from Stoughton.[14]

At about 4 in the afternoon, with the sun low over the western hills one hour before sunset, the rebels saw little of the defending militia to the west who revealed their mounted troops and sentinels drawn up between the arsenal, the low-lying workshops, and barracks to the north of the artillery. A company of hastily-gathered infantry, “the General’s Guard – composed of lawyers students merchants and scholars”[15] - was placed somewhere close to the right of the artillery. From here, Major General William Shepherd of Westfield, standing by the field pieces and the Guard, directed the defense. Nearby, under the command of Capt. Isaac Williams, another infantry company was posted to the right of the two guns.

Captain Williams and Daniel Shays had known each other during the Revolutionary War. Four months before, when Shays and his men shut down the Court House in Springfield, Williams and the company he commanded fell in and was, in turn, saluted by Shays and his column as they passed before the defending militia. The gulf that separated them on this cold January day, tragically, would permit no such generous formalities.

A meeting of militia Captain Buffington, accompanied by Captain William Lyman, Aide de Camp to Maj. Gen. William Shepherd, and rebel commanders without Shays, occurred just before the final rebel advance. Warned of what lay ahead, the rebel officers at first doubted that Shepherd was in command since they could not see him on either of the two horses in view. The rebel officers, offering to provide a meeting between Shays and Shepherd, were then rebuffed by Buffington and Lyman who immediately returned to the militia lines minutes before the column marched.[16]

Riding again to within seventy-five yards of the rebel column to observe whether the rebel force would move left or right, possibly to form a battle front, Lyman and Buffington were soon approached by another mounted Regulator officer named Wheeler. Warned of the danger ahead, Wheeler, as had the rebel officers Buffington met earlier, responded angrily to the threat. At that point, the column began its final charge and the officers, militia and rebel alike, returned to their own lines.[17]

Captain Adam Wheeler, of Hubbardston, was not a man to be trifled with. A fifty-five year old veteran of the French and Indian War, he was a Captain in the Revolutionary War serving at Lexington, Bunker Hill (alongside Daniel Shays) and at White Plains. Two and a half months earlier, he stood up to be counted, defending the Worcester County convention petition and the memory of the Revolutionary War in a letter to The Worcester Magazine when he wrote:

“We have lately emerged from a bloody war, in which liberty was the glorious prize aimed at: - I early stepped forth in the defence of this country, and cheerfully fought to gain this prize; and liberty is still the object I have in view . . . in this glorious cause I am determined to stand with firmness and resolution.”[18]

Unknown to the Regulators, the mounted militia forming a single line across their path masked the presence of the two field pieces, a cannon and a howitzer.[19] The two guns soon made their presence felt by the time the rebel column had marched only a hundred yards.[20] As the militia light cavalry turned right and left away from these guns, called “Government Puppies”[21] by the rebels, the muzzle of the recoiling field piece, likely a brass 3 or 6-pounder, barked and flashed as solid shot ripped the air, alarming a number of mounted rebels in the rear of the column as the projectiles roared by them in succession. The column, spurred by this, advanced rapidly now, accelerating to a trot with the boom of the guns. Efforts by Shays to redeploy into battle front at this point proved to be fruitless in the noise and rush of the moment. The rebel column, in fact, never deployed for battle, but marched directly into the fire of the defending guns in column formation – in much the same formation they had often assumed in their successful court house seizures. Within seconds, death would come to the rebels for the first time since the rebellion had begun.

In the front ranks of the rebels were about four hundred seasoned veterans of the Revolutionary War who, upon seeing the guns fire, threw themselves to the ground allowing the killing shot to pass overhead before quickly rising to their feet in an attempt to rush and overwhelm the gun emplacements. The first two defending shots had been intentionally aimed to fall wide of the column as a warning.[22]

Such kind mercies were not thereafter forthcoming as the guns, ordered by General Shepherd to strike the rebels “at waistband height,”[23] tore into the center of the column.[24] These next two solid shots hit the advancing rebels at the point just east of Federal Square where Boston Road (present-day State Street) makes a shallow turn to the westward. This was the mid-point of the column, with those in the front ranks allowed to rapidly advance momentarily unmolested. The fourth shot was especially damaging, killing two outright and mortally wounding a third. About this time, in the rush to fire this shot or the next, one of the defending militiamen, Sergeant Chaloner,[25] tasked with sponging his gun to extinguish any burning embers within the bores after each was fired, [26] became confused by the discharge of a nearby gun – possibly the howitzer which would have begun throwing grapeshot at this time. Thrusting the fleece-covered wooden plug on its long wooden shaft into his loaded gun’s bore instead of into the discharged gun, he lost both his arms as the gun was fired.[27]

Both cannon and howitzer now threw grape shot – a shotgun-like spray of dozens of inch-wide iron balls. At this point, the discipline of the advancing column failed just as the front of the column came within close range of the defenders’ guns and long seconds from overrunning the artillery positions. Eight to ten blasts of grape shot were quickly laid upon the charging front ranks until the howitzer, positioned south of Boston Road and just southwest of today’s State Street and Walnut Street intersection, was firing across the road hitting the tall sandstone marker, known as the Wait Marker. The field piece, which had done most of the firing up to that point, lay somewhere to the northwest of the intersection of today’s Federal and State Streets. The Wait Marker to this day bears pock marks from the grape shot fusillade on its western face (from the field piece) and southern face (from the howitzer).

The desperate rebels had gotten very close, indeed, before the deadly crossfire ceased. As the veterans in the front ranks broke, they joined those from the rear who were already fleeing eastward on Ludlow Road. So rapid was the flight of the forward wave of rebels that their commander, Captain White, was left standing alone in the forefront of the dissolving column. Stopping, he looked behind and then angrily glanced toward the militia before quickly laying his musket on the ground and jumping over nearby bushes to rejoin his comrades. On the ground lay three slain rebels with a fourth, named Spicer from the town of Leyden, mortally wounded. Many more rebels were wounded but survived.[28]

The militia’s mounted troops then attempted to ride after the scattered rebels, but were restrained from doing so by General William Shepherd until such time as the Regulators should mount a counter-attack. Shepherd, fearing a continuation of the action, remained on his guard throughout the darkness of the night and all the next day until reinforced at mid-day on the 27th by General Lincoln’s militia column from Boston. By all accounts, not a musket had been fired on either side except for a few harmless passing shots by rebels at mounted militiamen in the hours before the final rebel advance earlier that day. General Shepherd, in his report to Governor Bowdoin the day following the action, described finding three loaded rebel weapons on the field.[29]

A Clash of Dreams

The War of American Independence created twin offspring that, Janus-faced, embraced both past and future. One sought to preserve itself amid pressure to change, and the other, altered by that very experience, was drawn willingly into a new future. Shays’s Rebellion was the time and place when the external “enemy” had been pushed aside and the twin natures of the Revolution came, painfully, face to face.

Those who marched with Daniel Shays, Eli Parsons, Adam Wheeler and Luke Day on January 25th, 1787, felt they had the weight of law and tradition on their side. It was with such righteous determination that they challenged the legislature and governor who had clearly forfeited, in the Regulators’ eyes, any authority to govern. To Shays’s followers, the rebel column was not outside the system - it was the system. The rebels had not taken the law into their own hands. Rather, the law had never left their hands. They were not rebels but, rather, Regulators of a government that required correction.

This ethos was clearly stated in the Hatfield Convention address “to the PEOPLE [of] this County,” January 4th, 1787, three weeks before the clash on Continental hill in Springfield:

“We are a republick – government rests upon the shoulders of the people; therefore why should any be inactive in such a day as this, when perhaps their happiness and that of generations yet unborn, depend upon their exertions. Furthermore, we may do well to consider, that a kingdom or house divided against itself, cannot stand.”[30]

This last phrase, from Matthew’s gospel, resonated powerfully among such God-fearing people as these!

Such values also governed the actions and thoughts of many who stood among the militia on Continental Hill, as the Arsenal site was known. They, however, were held in their ranks through ties to the emerging nation state. Daniel Stebbins of Springfield, a sophomore at Yale with growing attachment to the elite, joined what he later described as the “Feather Bed Company” - a group of lawyers, students, merchants, and scholars including 16-year old James Byers, Jr.,[31] son of James Byers, an employee of the federal arsenal. They were typical of the ‘better sort’ seen turning out across the state in support of government and against the ‘disaffected’ lower orders.[32] Stebbins was “. . . placed in the rear rank, leaving Elias Hitchcock in the front rank who had been an Old Soldier & at this time had in his Knapsack his blanket & three days provision - . Never watched the cat the mouse more attentively than I did the Insurgents over Hitchcock’s shoulders. . ......”[33]

Other militiamen clearly expressed their ambivalence toward their military obligation by not reporting for duty at all. Certainly, nearly all the rebels were listed as militiamen in their own communities. Regulators, however, fulfilled this duty to protect their community against the usurpations of state leaders whose policies, they felt, were destroying their families and communities.[34] Among those who did appear as militiamen were many who failed, in turn, to come prepared that day with sufficient arms, accoutrements, and ammunition as they would have for even a routine monthly training day.[35] To alleviate this deficiency, Gen. Shepherd asked for and received, in the nick of time, tacit permission from federal Gen. Henry Knox to use the federally-owned arms and ammunition stored at the Springfield Arsenal “to be returned the instant the danger should subside. But . . . related solely to an attack on the arsenal, and on the principle, that it could not otherwise be defended.”[36] These weapons consisted mostly of thousands of Revolutionary War-era flintlock muskets, principally French, and light field artillery including 3 or 6-pounder guns and five and a half inch bore howitzers.

As members of the elite, the militia’s senior officers clearly accepted and supported the ascendancy of the nation state over that of any sense of governance so rooted in the people at large. Officers who didn’t were likely to be found in the ranks of the Regulators. The commander of the militia at the Arsenal, Major General William Shepherd, expressed the elite’s viewpoint succinctly in a letter to Knox that events would determine “the decision of the question whether we are to have the satisfaction of living under a Constitution and fixed, permanent and known laws, or under the misrule of Anarchy.”[37] Both Captains William Lyman and Samuel Buffington, militia officers, understood this when they rode out to the Regulator column warning rebel officers in no uncertain terms “that General Shepherd was posted not only by the authority of the state, but by Congress, and that the Post would be defended at all hazards.”[38] This was something of an exaggeration since, as Shepherd well knew. Congress had not met to respond to the crisis and Gen. Knox had made this clear when he wrote Shepherd during the final preparations for the anticipated rebel advance:

“There has not been any Congress which could proceed to business, . . . it is entirely out of my power to appropriate any of the public Arms or Stores without an order of Congress. This want of power applies equally to the sale or loan of the Arms or Stores- I feel for your situation . . . yet in case the insurgents should demonstrate an intention of seizing the arsenal or any of the Stores contained therein and it could not otherwise be successfully defended, - I am of the opinion that property & necessity would justify the action of taking part of the arms and ammunition for the defense of the remainder, . . ..”[39]

That the militia officers had misgivings is likely, however. Even Gen. Shepherd, in his first post-action report to his superior, Governor Bowdoin, wrote immediately that “[T]he unhappy time is come in which we have been obliged to shed blood.”[40] Such regret would likely not have been expressed if the fight was against British forces of hardly half a dozen years earlier. Rather, these men knew each other on many levels and shared a common past. Such bonds brought forth muffled efforts aimed at conciliation and compromise which, in the end, failed. Shepherd, himself a debtor[41], bore the heaviest burden this day. Though hailed as a hero by the authorities in the months following, he was never financially compensated by the state for his out-of-pocket expenses in supplying the defending militia with foodstuffs, rum, and supplies. Writing to his friend, General Henry Knox, a few years after the Rebellion, he described how “[m]y Duty at that distressing Time – which excited against me the keenest Resentments of the disappointed Insurgents . . . Those Loses and Disappointments, added to other Complexities, sett heavily upon me.”[42] Called by many within his community of Westfield “Murderer of our Brethren,” he was increasingly isolated and, in an age when truly no man was an island, impoverished in the years remaining to him.

Captain Samuel Buffington, commanding the militia’s light cavalry that day, held these feelings and thoughts within him as he rode out alone in the mid-morning of January 25th to meet and to report on the approaching rebel column. After riding east five miles on Boston Road, he viewed the halted rebel column before he was, in turn, recognized by mounted officers who called him by name. These men spoke to him in terms strongly expressive of their determination to have Continental Hill before sunset. Meeting the rebel column again closer to the Arsenal, Buffington was greeted this time by Capt. Daniel Shays who, armed with a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, “familiarly asked, “How are you Buffington?” I [Buffington] replied, “You see I am here, in defense of that country you are endeavoring to destroy.” He [Shays] rejoined, “If you are in defense of this country, we are both defending the same cause.” . . . I [Buffington] then observed to him, if he advanced, he must meet those men we both had once been accustomed to obey.” [43]

Such shared memory of the War of Independence pervaded Massachusetts political and social relations. Most of the population then living had experienced and witnessed the achievement of independence from Britain. This new rebellion, however, coming so soon after the realization of independence, resurrected unresolved tensions defining the meaning of democracy in this new republic. A member of a western Massachusetts county convention in the fall of 1786 expressed the increasingly popular sentiment that the Revolution was incomplete and “we undertook to fight for liberty, and some people pretend to say we have got it . . ....”[44] The use of county conventions to give voice to public grievances offended others, however, who considered such actions extralegal, calling them treasonous and subversive to the state constitution - revered as a “work of labour and blood.”[45] It was described by them as “. . . an insult on the good sense of this people, as to compare their present movements with those of 1775, and the infamous suggestions of cruelties that never existed.”[46] Clearly, what had appeared to be common ground was looking increasingly like a battleground.

That same memory precipitated action when, on November 30th, 1786, rebel leader, Captain Job Shattuck, and others were seized by a government posse and held prisoner in Boston.[47] Responding to exaggerated rumors of outrages during the arrest, the Regulators mobilized within a few days much as they had in April 1775.[48] Shays immediately wrote a military mobilization order to his unit commanders, stating that “the seeds of war are now sown . . ., I request you to let this letter be read, and for you and every man to supply men and provisions, and relieve us with a reinforcement.”[49]

A week later, December 9th, written orders from Pelham went to seventeen rebel captains throughout Hampshire County “that the several companies and regiments in the said county be properly organized and officered . . . agreeable to martial order.”[50] This escalation was soon to turn deadly as muskets, military formations, fifes and drums increasingly became instruments of war rather than the provocative props of organized protest they had been up to that point. Ten days before marching on Springfield Arsenal, Shays and his fellow officers, recognizing the object of Gen. Lincoln’s march from Boston, issued orders to the companies of armed Regulators throughout the region “to assemble the company under your command, well armed and equipped, with ten days provision, and march . . . by Friday the 19th instant, there to receive further orders.”[51]

Whose Republic?

Captain Williams’s militia company watched as bystanders joined the ranks of Shays’s Regulators marching past on their way to Continental Hill following the adjournment of the Court that September of 1786. The Revolutionary War had reawakened class divisions and tensions that the difficult years since the end of the war had only aggravated. Members of county conventions challenged the power elite head-on, defending the yeoman in the press and with petitions to the state government. Those of the middling sort, like William Williams of Dalton, also held little sympathy with the government’s heavy hand, writing that “[T]he treatment people of my character & sentiments have recd from the present government does not make it their duty to expose themselves to abuse and insult from a disappointed and enraged populace in support of it.”[52]

Analogies to ancient republican Rome were recalled by both the elite and insurgents to buttress their right to either distrust the voices of the county conventions or, as righteously, by the conventioneers to support them.[53] And, if that wasn’t reason enough to demonstrate the validity of the conventioneer’s argument, the grace of God was more often cited by the Regulators, i.e., “. . . the voice of the people is the voice of God, it is as true now as it was twelve years ago.”[54]

The classical Roman ideals central to the Society of the Cincinnati, the elite society of Revolutionary War officers, were articulated by General Benjamin Lincoln at Boston in October, 1786, condemning “these dangerous and disgraceful proceedings” while, in the same breath, recalling to the conventioneers “the honour they have acquired in the field, by their regard for the feelings and reputation of their brethren, and above all by the love they bear their country and posterity,. ..”[55] This was thin gruel, indeed, to the conventioneer who responded “that freedom, which has been purchased by the blood of thousands, has vanished like the empty delusions of an hour.”[56] Another conventioneer pointedly retorted to “let those who have taken upon them the name of Cincinnatus, imitate his virtues,” as he who “returned to his plough: And asked no other reward. . . . a conduct very different from some of your silver headed modern patriots.”[57]

Finally, in December, the bonds of obligation that held long pent-up resentments of the elite Revolutionary War officer class boiled over in the form of a declaration from “Massachusetts Soldiery” representing “the voice of the late Soldiery of the Continental Army.” – apparently a number of Regulators.[58] For them, the role of the former officers in suppressing their vox populi had destroyed the fiction that memory of shared sacrifice could somehow bridge the class divide. These six “resolves” were eventually published in the popular press several months later stating the terms of a new social contract. Pointedly countering “some resolves of a society of Continental Officers, who assume the appellation of Cincinnati, we, the Continental Soldiers of Massachusetts, in imitation of their example, beg leave to address the publick for ourselves, . ..” Stating that their sacrifices for freedom are “as costly and unsullied as those of our officers,” they boldly declared “that we will never serve under our former officers on any occasion whatever.”[59] Of such things are revolutions made!

Ambivalence and Mercy

Many years after standing in the ranks of the militia defending the Springfield Arsenal, Daniel Stebbins would conclude that “it had been resolved by the Insurgents, that it was necessary that the Continental Stores of arms & ammunition at Springfield should be obtained “peaceably if they could.’”[60] He recounted how Shays had led the armed rebels in military formation during the closing of the Springfield Court of Common Pleas the previous September with little sense of hostility to the militia. In fact, clear indications of personal friendship were displayed by both Shays, leading the armed Regulators in formation, and Capt. Williams of the militia company. Marching up Continental Hill from the Court House with colors flying to fifes and drums, the growing ranks of Shays’s rebels approached the unguarded Springfield Arsenal with its stores, twice marched around it, and left.[61] If Shays and his men had wanted the federal arsenal and barracks then, they could have had it without firing so much as a shot. They would not have such an opportunity the next time they came to Continental Hill.

The question remains, then, why Shays and his force did not mount a sustained attack on January 25th, 1787. Observers noted that only when his column came under artillery fire did Shays attempt to deploy in battle front – the only formation from which all the muskets of the attackers could be brought into action. Perhaps Shays assumed, as did many of his officers and men, that they would take the site by storm in the same manner that had proved so successful since the first court closing the previous summer. A column’s military use is chiefly to facilitate movement of large numbers of soldiers. Under attack, it is a sitting duck! There’s no evidence that Shays’s force ever drilled in battle formation for such an eventuality. The snow on the ground would certainly not have presented a sufficient obstacle to such a maneuver. Though the column officers lacked much experience at rank higher than company commander during the Revolutionary War, many had taken part in redeployments from column into line. They knew how to make battle! However, that lack of command experience may have proved crucial to the Regulator’s loss. Certainly, command experience wasn’t a problem for the defending militia’s commanders. In the end, it may have been simply inconceivable to the Regulators that the militia should be subjected to the same level of contempt and hostility they had once reserved for the British forces a dozen years earlier. Shepherd, by contrast, knew what his duty was.

The shock of the repulse at Springfield shattered the confidence of the Regulators’ leadership as well as that of the rank and file. Shays seemed stunned and the fight taken out of him. Not long after the sun had set behind the retreating force of Regulators, when writing to General Shepherd for liberty to bury the dead and gather the wounded,[62] Daniel Shays penned a message to Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. Lincoln’s advancing militia column, more than twice the size of the one that had just repulsed Shays’s men, was hardly a day’s march east in Brookfield. In his message, Shays proposed a general truce allowing rebels as well as militia to return to their homes, “patiently waiting and hoping for constitutional relief, from the insupportable burdens they now labour under.”[63] As if hoping that somehow he could turn back the clock a day, he wrote that he was “unwilling to be any way accessory to the shedding of blood, and greatly desirous of restoring peace and harmony to this convulsed Commonwealth, . ..”[64]

The rebel force went through Wilbraham as far as Ludlow before turning back to Chicopee where they blocked the road north. The core of the Regulators then moved north to South Hadley, Amherst and thence to Pelham. Along the way, they shed soldiers. Lieutenant Bullen of the Ware militia company left at Chicopee. His Captain, Joseph Bellow, wounded at South Hadley, remained behind. The Ware Company’s sole remaining officer, Ensign Judah Marsh, then dismissed the rest of the company as they reached Amherst before he, too, returned home.[65]

Five days later, from his encampment at Pelham, Shays responded to a flag of truce from Lincoln and reiterated his plea for peace with a pardon for all “as 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.”[66] After approaching Lincoln’s camp in Hadley under a flag of truce, Capt. Adam Wheeler, like many others, walked away from further involvement in the rebellion. The same day that Shays addressed his letter to Lincoln from Pelham, a petition (rejected by the legislature a week later) was forwarded from the officers of all rebel units to Boston, seeking redress of grievances stating “that we have been in errour in having recourse to arms. . .”[67]

Others, however, such as Captain Eli Parsons, of Adams, were not ready for a truce but, instead, resolved to continue the struggle more intensely. From the Berkshires, hardly a week after the February 5th scattering of the Regulator army at Petersham by Lincoln’s surprise 9 am assault, Capt. Parsons attempted to rally his comrades with a call “to destroy Shepard’s army . . .” and “to Burgoyne Lincoln and his army.”[68] In the months ahead, the armed Regulators in the Berkshires, relatively untouched by Shays’s defeat at Springfield and pursuit to Petersham, would increasingly become engaged in bitter small-scale conflict until the final clash at Sheffield.

In contrast to General Shepherd, it was General Lincoln who seems to have most successfully balanced his obligations to his fellow elites with those traditional community values and ties consistent with memory of the Revolutionary War among the lower ranks. Lincoln led many thousands of Massachusetts soldiers in the fight for independence, suffered the pain of defeat and surrender with them at Charleston, and received Cornwallis’s surrender, in turn, with Washington at Yorktown. Unlike so many of those in the seat of power in Boston and elsewhere who had not shared in the veterans’ experience of war, Lincoln’s public expressions of authority in the press were consistently rooted in reverence toward the state’s constitution, the sacrifice to gain it, and “the honour they have acquired in the field, by their regard for the feelings and reputation of their brethren.”[69]

Four days before Shays’s men advanced on Continental Hill, Benjamin Lincoln spoke to his troops at Marlborough. In his GENERAL ORDERS, he required his soldiers to protect the citizenry regardless of their political stripe under pain of “the most exemplary punishment.”[70] In the difficult days ahead, he maneuvered his large military force in such a way that few on either side were seriously hurt and none were killed in action, all the while skillfully maneuvering his army to the point at which quick decisive action broke the Regulator force at Petersham without a shot fired in anger.

Lincoln’s slow progress to Worcester and then to Springfield, after Shays’s deadly march on Continental Hill, forced Shays’s hand. Once in the Connecticut River valley, Lincoln moved steadily and deliberately, sometimes outflanking rebel road blocks, such as the one at Chicopee when Lincoln’s entire army marched up the frozen Connecticut River, without firing a shot, all the while giving the Regulators ample opportunity to escape or retire from harm’s way. Simultaneously, he kept open communications with them and the communities in his path even as he reaffirmed the law of the land. When he did move quickly and decisively, it was with the element of surprise on his side and under darkness.[71]

In the end, Lincoln could report to the Governor, from Petersham within the overrun rebel camp, “that this has been effected, and bloodshed avoided, . . .. A different line of conduct . . . would have given them support, and led them to acts of violence, . . ..”[72] His conciliatory tone seemed to be reflected, for a moment, in the relieved response of the Senate and House of Representative in a message to Governor Bowdoin two days later. Upon receiving word from Lincoln, Senator Samuel Phillips and Representative Artemas Ward brought the legislature together in urging that military reinforcements be reduced or stopped “as a measure well calculated to restore peace and order to this Commonwealth, without hazarding the effusion of much blood.”[73]

Such hopeful sentiments, however, soon fell victim to fear and anger as harsh punitive measures were promulgated. Within three days, the Governor ignored Lincoln’s advice and placed a price upon the heads of Shays, Day, Wheeler, and Parsons, declaring them “the principals in, and abettors and supporters of this unnatural, unprovoked, and wicked Rebellion, against the dignity, authority and government of the said Commonwealth.”[74] Such actions were far from the Roman republican model of Cincinnatus, an ideal that bore fruit for a moment in the person of Benjamin Lincoln.

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[1] County of Hampshire Supreme Court, p. 327; Particulars of the Proceedings at Springfield, communicated by a gentleman of veracity, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXIX, v. II, p. 340, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, October, 1786.

[2] Particulars of the Proceedings at Springfield, communicated by a gentleman of veracity, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXIX, v. II, p. 340, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, October, 1786.

[3] Copy of a letter to Gov. Bowdoin, Sept 17th, 1786, Westfield, William Shepard papers: Memorial Libraries, P.O. Box 53, Deerfield, MA 01342.

Westfield

[4] Copy of a letter from the Hon. General Shephard, to his Excellency the Governour, dated, . Springfield, January 26, 1787, . . William Shephard. , The Worcester Magazine, no. XLVI, v. II, p. 558, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[5] General Shepard to Governor Bowdoin, Springfield, January 26, 1787, Henry Knox Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

[6] From a late Northampton paper, . . ., The Worcester Magazine, no. XLIX, v. II, p. 605, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[7] The Worcester Magazine, no. XXXVII, v. II, pp. 452-3, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, December, 1786.

[8] Declaration of JOSHUA WOODBRIDGE, of Northfield, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLVI, v. II, p. 562, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February 1st, 1787.

[9] General Shepard to Governor Bowdoin, Springfield, January 26, 1787, Henry Knox Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

[10] Low, Nathaniel, An Astronomical Diary or ALMANACK For the Year of Christian Era 1787, T.&J. Fleet, Boston.

[11] Insurgent Papers, . . . Luke Day to Capt Shays, West-Springfield, January 25, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLV, v. II, p. 544, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, Febuary, 1787.

[12] From a late Northampton paper, . . ., The Worcester Magazine,no. XLIX, v. II, p. 605, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[13] Suffolk Court Files, Hampshire, April, 1787, Nos. 159059, 159060, reprinted in the Journal of the American Antiquarian Society, A few Notes on the Shays Rebellion, Oct., 1902, pp. 211-2.

[14] Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the War of the Revolution, Vol. XIII, Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co., 1896, p. 826.

[15] Recollection of January 25th, 1787: Dan Stebbins reminisces, (1845) vol. I, pp. 48, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA

[16] Recollection of January 25th, 1787: Testimony of Samuel Buffington, Feb. 1st, 1787, and Recollection of January 25th, 1787: Testimony of William Lyman, Feb. 6th, 1787, Caleb Strong Papers, Stephen Strong Collection, Forbes Lib., Northampton, MA.

[17] Recollection of January 25th, 1787: Testimony of William Lyman, Feb. 6th, 1787, Caleb Strong Papers, Stephen Strong Collection, Forbes Lib., Northampton, MA.

[18] Friends and Countrymen, . . . Adam Wheeler, Hubbardston, Nov. 7th, 1786, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXXIX, v. II, pp. 473-5, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, December, 1786.

[19] Son David to Father David, Hoyt papers, Box 1 Folder 3,

Memorial Libraries, Deerfield, MA [January 25, 1787].

[20] General Shepard to Governor Bowdoin, Springfield, January 26, 1787, Henry Knox Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

[21] Recollection of January 25th, 1787:Dan Stebbins reminisces, (1845) vol. I, pp. 48, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA

[22] Summons from Luke Day, at West-Springfield, to the Commanding Officer at Springfield, January 25th, 1787, . . . Luke Day, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLIV, v. II, p. 535, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[23] Recollection of January 25th, 1787:

Dan Stebbins reminisces, (1845) vol. I, pp. 48, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA

[24] Recollection of January 25th, 1787:

Dan Stebbins reminisces, (1845) vol. I, pp. 48, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA

[25] Anecdote of Sergeant Chaloner, The Worcester Magazine, No. XLVIII, Vol. II, p. 596,

Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[26] Recollection of January 25th, 1787:

Dan Stebbins reminisces, (1845) vol. I, pp. 48, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA

[27] John Chaloner to the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives, Feb. 21st, 1787.

The WORCESTER MAGAZINE, vol. II, no. LII, Fourth week of March, 1787, p. 648.

[28] Letter of son David to father David Hoyt, January 25, 1787, Hoyt papers, Box 1 Folder 3,

Memorial Libraries, Deerfield, MA.

[29] General Shepard to Governor Bowdoin, Springfield, January 26, 1787, Henry Knox Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

[30] An Address from the Convention at Hatfield, . . John Billings, Chairman, Isaac Pepper, Clerk, Hatfield, Jan. 4th, 1787, no. XLII, v. II, p. 511, The Worcester Magazine, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, January, 1787.

[31] Chapin, Charles Wells, Sketches of the old inhabitants and other citizens of old Springfield of the present century: And its historic mansions of "ye olden tyme", Springfield Printing and Binding Co., Springfield, Mass., 1893, pp. 91-4.

[32] Worcester, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLIII, v. II, p. 526, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[33] Recollection of January 25th, 1787: Dan Stebbins reminisces, (1845) vol. I, pp. 49, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA

[34] The Confession of Judah Marsh, jun. of Ware, . . . February 14, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLVIII, v. II, p. 596, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[35] Copy letter to his Excellency Gov. Bowdoin from Wm. Shepard, Jan’y 19th, 1787; Copy of letter to Gen’l Knox from Wm. Shepard, Jan’y 12th, 1787, William Shepard papers: Memorial Libraries, P.O. Box 53, Deerfield, MA 01342.

[36] Copy of a letter to Major General Shepard from Henry Knox, New York, 21 January, 1787, Henry Knox Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

[37] Copy of letter to General Knox, Dec, 17, 1786, Westfield, Dec. 17th, 1786, William Shepard papers:

Memorial Libraries, P.O. Box 53, Deerfield, MA 01342

[38] Recollection of January 25th, 1787: Testimony of Samuel Buffington, Feb. 1st, 1787, Caleb Strong Papers, Stephen Strong Collection, Forbes Lib., Northampton, MA

[39] Copy of a letter to Major General Shepard from Henry Knox, New York, 21 January, 1787, Henry Knox Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

[40] General Shepard to Governor Bowdoin, Springfield, January 26, 1787, Henry Knox Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

[41] To William Shepard Esquire of Westfield, . . . Rob Breck Clerk, . . . Jan. 31, 1786, William Shepard papers: Memorial Libraries, P.O. Box 53, Deerfield, MA 01342.

[42] Letter from William Sheppard to Henry Knox, 1790 or later, William Shepard papers: Memorial Libraries, P.O. Box 53, Deerfield, MA 01342.

[43] Recollection of January 25th, 1787: Testimony of Samuel Buffington, Feb. 21, 1787, Caleb Strong Papers, Stephen Strong Collection, Forbes Lib., Northampton, MA.

[44] Mr. Editor. ., A Conventioner, no. XXIII, v. I, pp. 273-6; To the Inhabitants of Massachusetts, … From the humble Cell of Consideration . .., no. XXVI, v. I, pp. 291-2; Mr. Editor, no. XXIX, v. II, pp. 347-9; Report of Society of the Cincinnati . . ..Boston, Oct. 11, 1786, no. XXIX, v. II, pp. 353-4, , October, 1786; Mr. Editor. ., An Impartial Yeoman, no. XXXIX, v. II, pp. 471-3, December, 1786, The Worcester Magazine, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas.

[45] On Conventions. ., An Other Citizen, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXIX, v. II, pp. 349-50,

Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, October, 1786.

[46] Mr. Editor. ., A Son of Freedom, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXXIX, v. II, pp. 473-5,

Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, December, 1786.

[47] From the INDEPENDENT CHRONICLE. . ., Boston, Jan. 4th, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLI, v. II, p. 500, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, January, 1787.

[48] Mr. Editor. ., One of the People, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXXVIII, v. II, pp. 461-2,

Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, December, 1786.

[49] Copy of a letter from Capt. Thomas Grover, and Lieut. Elisha Pondell-to Capt. Harvey, a member of the General Court, from Montague., Shrewsbury, Dec. 2, 1786, Hampshire Gazette, Feb 21, 1787, Memorial Libraries, Deerfield, MA, #L04.090

[50] To the good People of the Town of Deerfield. . . Done in Committee, at Pelham, 9th

December, 1786, John Powers, Chairman, Hampshire Gazette, Jan 3, 1787, Memorial Libraries, Deerfield, MA, #L04.074

[51] D. Shays to Capt. John Brown, Whately. . , Pelham, January 15th, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLIV, v. II, p. 535, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[52] Letter of William Williams, Jan. 15, 1787, Memorial Libraries, Deerfield, MA, #L04.026.

[53] Mr. Editor, . . . A Freeman, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXVIII, v. II, pp. 336-8, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, September, 1786.

[54] Mr. Editor, . . . A Freeman, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXVIII, v. II, pp. 336-8, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, September, 1786.

[55] At a meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, holden at Boston, on the 11th October, 1786, the following resolves were passed unanimously, . . . B. Lincoln, President, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXIX, v. II, pp. 353-4, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, September, 1786.

[56] Mr. Editor, . . the following Address of the Convention of the County of Worcester to the People, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXXIV, v. II, pp. 404-6, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, November, 1786.

[57] Mr. Editor, . . . A Member of Convention, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXVII, v. II, pp. 320-3, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, September, 1786.

[58] Mr. Editor, . . . A Peaceable Citizen, Rutland, Dec. 20th, 1787 (sic.), The Worcester Magazine, no. XLV, v. II, p. 546, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[59] Mr. Editor, . . . Massachusetts Soldiery, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLV, v. II, pp. 545-6, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[60] Recollection of January 25th, 1787: Dan Stebbins reminisces, (1845) vol. I, pp. 45, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA

[61] Recollection of January 25th, 1787: Dan Stebbins reminisces, (1845) vol. I, pp. 45, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA

[62] To Gen’l Shepherd of the Commanding Officer in Springfield, . . . Daniel Shays Capt, [Jan. 26, 1787], The Worcester Magazine, no. XLV, v. II, p. 544, Worcester, Mass, printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787; Capt. Shays to Gen. Shepard, Jan. 27th, 1787, Hampshire Gazette, Feb. 14th, 1787, #L04.088, Memorial Libraries, Deerfield, MA.

[63] To the Honorable Major General Lincoln, . . . Daniel Shays, Wilbraham, January 25th, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLIV, v. II, pp. 534-5, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[64] To the Honorable Major General Lincoln, . . . Daniel Shays, Wilbraham, January 25th, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLIV, v. II, pp. 534-5, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[65] From the Hon. General Lincoln, to his Excellency the Governor, Head-Quarters, Springfield, January 28th, 1787, no. XLV, v. II, pp. 548-9; The Confession of Judah Marsh, jun. of Ware, . . . February 14, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLVIII, v. II, p. 596, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[66] To General Lincoln, . , Pelham, January 30th, 1787,. . Daniel Shays, Capt., , The Worcester Magazine, no. XLV, v. II, pp. 544-5, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[67] To the Honourable the Senate, and the Massachusetts House of Representatives, . A Petition of the Officers, . . . Francis Stone, Chairman of the Committee, . . Read and accepted by the Officers, Pelham, January 30th, 1787, , The Worcester Magazine, no. XLVII, v. II, p. 574, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[68] Friends and Fellow Sufferers, . , Berkshire, February 13th, 1787,. . Eli Parsons. , The Worcester Magazine, no. XLVIII, v. II, p. 596, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[69] At a meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, holden at Boston, on the 11th October, 1786, the following resolves were passed unanimously, . . . B. Lincoln, President, The Worcester Magazine, no. XXIX, v. II, pp. 353-4, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, September, 1786.

[70] GENERAL ORDERS, . , Marlborough, January 21st, 1787 , The Worcester Magazine, no. XLIII, v. II, p. 526 opposite page, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[71] From the Hon. General Lincoln, to his Excellency the Governor, Head-Quarters, Springfield, January 28th, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLV, v. II, pp. 548-9, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[72] Letter from General Lincoln, . . ., Petersham, February 4th, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLVI, v. II, pp. 563-4, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[73] To his Excellency James Bowdoin, Esq., the Governour . . ., In Senate, February 6, 1787, . ., In the House of Representatives, Feb. 6, 1787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLVI, v. II, pp. 564-5, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

[74] Reward for apprehending Shays, Day, Wheeler and Parsons, . . .By his Excellency James Bowdoin, Esq.; Governour, . . .Feb. 6th, 1 787, The Worcester Magazine, no. XLVI, v. II, p. 568, Worcester, Mass, Printed by I. Thomas, February, 1787.

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