Shays's Rebellion Chapter 3

THE SHAYS REBELLION 123 

dency was given in conventions of the period under consideration. 
Take for example one of the diatribes of Samuel Ely as reported, 
"that he did then and there wickedly declare that the Attornies, 
Sheriffs, and all Officers should be sacrificed, that Major John C. 
Williams should be made a sacrifice of and his body should be 
given to the Fowls of the air and to the Beasts of the field." 

In the height of presumption reached, a convention was attempt- 
ed which might rival even the General Court in authority and 
power. 

Still, in all our consideration of this momentous period, it must 
be borne in mind that the general conditions were harrowing to 
an extreme and well-nigh unendurable degree. Minot viewing 
them at close range appreciated them as it is hardly possible for 
us to appreciate them at a remove from them of a century and a 
quarter, and in the vastly changed conditions which now exist. 
With charitable forbearance he declares: 

"From the short view which we have taken of the affairs of 
the Commonwealth, sufficient causes appear to account for the 
commotions which ensued. A heavy debt lying on the state, 
added to burdens of the same nature upon almost every corpor- 
ation within it; [he means of course civic body, county and town] 
a decline, or rather an extinction of public credit; a relaxation of 
manners and a free use of foreign luxuries (by the few who could 
command them) ; a decay of trade and manufactures ; a prevailing 
scarcity of money; and, above all, individuals involved in debt to 
each other; are evils which leave us under no necessity of search- 
ing further for the reasons of the insurrections which took place. 
We ought not to be surprised to find the people, who but a few 
years before, upon the abolition of royal government among them, 
exhibited a most striking example of voluntary submission to 
feeble authority, now driven into a confusion of affairs, common 
to all countries, but most so perhaps, to those who have shewn 
the strongest ardour in the pursuit of freedom." (Insurrections, 
&c., pp. 27-8.) 

The Committee appointed by the Legislature to investigate af- 
fairs in Hampshire county consisted of no less illustrious person- 
ages than Samuel Adams of the Senate and Artemas Ward and 
Nathaniel Gorham of the House. They reached Northampton on 
July 27, and hurried to Conway, where Samuel Ely lived. Dele- 
gates from thirteen other towns in the northern part of the county 
assembled to advise with the people of Conway in relation to the 



124 WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS 

response to be made to the Legislative committee with the result 
that all parties at issue united in calling a county convention to 
meet at Hatfield. Pursuant to that call the convention met Aug- 
ust 7 and continued its session for three days. 

At a town meeting held at Westfield, Aug. 5, 1782, two dele- 
gates to that convention "in order to heal the uneasiness in the 
County" were chosen, Capt. Daniel Sacket and Lieut. Richard 
Falley. 

It is natural to find that, held under such auspices of constitu- 
tional authority, represented by men from the Capital of such dig- 
nity, wisdom and influence, the proceedings and findings of that 
convention were orderly, conservative and reassuring to those 
who respected governmental authority and desired to have it re- 
asserted and maintained in all parts of the Commonwealth. Suf- 
ficient sympathy with the reasonable grievances and consideration 
for the must demands of the large body of disaffected citizens 
were shown, not only to prevent them from finding any fresh 
occasion and ground for grievance, but sufficient also to encourage 
them to a course of patient forbearance until their wrongs might 
be righted by orderly and constitutional processes. 

Among the fourteen resolutions adopted, the most important 
issues treated dealt with a more equable distribution of the bur- 
dens of taxation; fewer civil officers and reduced salaries; in- 
creased economy of administration of government; and immunity 
from punishment of all engaged in recent disorders except Samuel 
Ely. They concluded with fervid expressions of loyalty to the 
authority of State and Congress. 

Characteristic observations and comments of Judd in his Diary 
are too quaint and interesting to be neglected. He was certainly 
an original, independent and piquant observer. 

Wednesday 7 set out at 7j^. Stopt at Northampton to get Shaved; 
got to Hatfield by 10^- Put up at Lt. D. BilHngs. Chose Coll Wells 
Chairman and Dean O. Smith Clerk. I assisted him in reading. Began 
upon Business at 3. The committee from the General Court present, and 
the first question was whether their Commission was Constitutional. We 
then determined to let every one tell his grievances and adjourned. 

Thursday 8. The Mobb began to tell their Grievances and the [com- 
mittee] to answer and give information. The Day was spent in this way. 
The Mobbists began to feel themselves more a ground than they expected. 
The Tories who are spectators in very great plenty do not hold their heads 
so High as they have done of late. 

Fryday 9. Began where we left off. Afterwards chose a committee 
to state Grievances to us. Then the Mobb still continued to tell their 



THE SHAYS REBELLION 125 

Grievances but got upon the Shoals long before night. Committee report 
near Night. 

Saturday 10. Began in the morning upon the Report of the Comttee 
which consisted of 8 Articles. 3 we passed and the rest we through out. 
Friends of the Mobb could not get things to their Mind. They [are] Dis- 
appointed and Chagrined. What that may produce is uncertain, but 'tis 
certain that they cannot answer the arguments of the Comtee, or gainsay 
the facts they asserted. The appearance is that there is more probability 
of their being still if nothing more. Convention broke up about 6. 

Westfield voted in town meeting, Jan. 23, 1783, "not to pay any 
Rates by Distress until June 1." The vote stood 50 in the affirm- 
ative and 40 in the opposition. That respectable minority, such 
in size and such in quality and standing in the community, seems 
to have felt bitterly indignant against the action taken, and ex- 
pressed its outraged feelings by having spread upon the records 
the following deliverance. "We the Subscribers and Inhabitants 
of the Town of Westfield do hereby enter our Protest against 
the proceedings and transactions of some of the Inhabitants of sd 
Town Openly declaring our dissent from sd Vote, Utterly refus- 
ing to pay any cost or Charge that may arise from the Neglect of 
the Same." Among the forty names appended appear those of 
"Saml Mather Esq., Col. Wm. Shepard, Mr. Saml Fowler, Zach 
Bush Jr., Col. Dd Moseley, Capt. Dl Sacket, Russell Dewey, Capt. 
Jho Gray, Doct. Whitney, Mr, Jho Ballantine, Doct. Isl Ashley, 
Lieut. Falley, Dn Joseph Root, Bolian King, and Abel Whitney." 

An attempt to reconsider the vote failed on Feb. 3 and again 
a few days later. 

It was also voted not to indemnify the town constables for pen- 
alties which might result from that original vote. 

There is no record of any action of the town relative to the 
four conventions held during 1783, which indeed were less gen- 
erally representative of the county at large than preceding ones. 

Jonathan Judd, Jr., was at one of them held at Hatfield in 
March, where thirteen towns were represented by delegates. He 
says of it : "We were good Natured, had no disputes, very re- 
served. They want to get rid of Major Hawley and myself. Near 
night we set ofif, leaving all the rest." Being rid of them, the Con- 
vention proceeded to vote to pay no taxes to the State and ad- 
journed to meet at Hadley, Apr. 15. Judd says of that later 
meeting : "They felt feeble and fearfull. They begin to know the 
County are not with them and they must try to pay Taxes. 
Truths are told them more plain than they have been and they 
feel them since aid is not likely to come from New York." 



126 WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS 

It was during the month of May, on the first day of holding 
the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of General Sessions 
of the Peace at Springfield, that the first and only overt act of 
1783 occurred in the county. The incident is described in the 
issue of the Massachusetts Gazette and General Advertiser of 
May 27: 

On Tuesday, being the day on which the general sessions of the peace 
and the court of common pleas opened in this town, a banditti collected 
from obscure corners of the county, composed of men of the most infamous 
character, to the amount of about sixty in number, met in this town to 
prevent the sitting of the court. * * * They showed no disposition to 
attack the courts in the forenoon; at two o'clock they met at a public house 
in the town and resolved themselves to be a convention of the county met 
together for the purpose of redressing grievances; after having passed sev- 
eral important resolves they adjourned their convention to the elm tree 
near the court house; when the bell rang for the court, they, in hostile 
parade, armed with white bludgeons cut for the purpose, marched before 
the door of the court house, and when the court, headed by the sheriff, 
came to the door, with insolence opposed their entrance; the sheriff in mild 
tones of persuasion, addressing them as gentlemen, desired them to make 
way. 

His civility was repaid with outrage, and an action soon commenced; 
happily there was a collection of people friendly to the government present, 
and the mob was repulsed with broken heads. A number of them were 
instantly taken and committed to prison; after which by a regular proced- 
ure, they were brought before the court of sessions for examination and 
were bound to appear before the supreme court, 

The Court House in Springfield stood opposite Meeting-House 
lane, now Elm Street, on the east side of Main Street, where San- 
ford Street now enters it. The elm tree under which the rioters 
met stood a couple of rods south of the Court House on the same 
side of the street. 

Concerning the financial distress of the people at that period, 
it is a notable fact that a great part of the time and discussion of 
many of the town meetings in Westfield during those years was 
directed toward possible methods of collecting taxes. It was a 
matter of the utmost difficulty, year after year, to get men to 
serve as constables. At each annual March meeting many persons 
were elected who absolutely refused to serve and paid the sizable 
fine imposed for such refusal. 

When it is remembered that at the close of the Revolution the 
State debt of Massachusetts amounted to £1,300,000, besides 
£250,000 due to officers and soldiers, and that the State's pro- 
portion of the federal debt was no less than £1,500,000, it is evi- 



THE SHAYS REBELLION 127 

dent that taxes must have been an awful burden upon an impover- 
ished people. The towns also owed war debts of their own in- 
curring for bounties of soldiers, for military supplies, as well as 
for current expenses. 

The Massachusetts Gazette in 1784 published the following, 
which also appeared in papers in New York and elsewhere, show- 
ing the popular conception of burning questions then at issue : 
"A Shorter Catechism. Q. What is law? A. A servant to the 
rich and a taskmaster. Q. What are courts of justice? A. Ex- 
.ecutioners of the law. Q. What are lawyers? A. Rods of cor- 
ruption. Q. What is patriotism? A. An hobby horse. Q. What 
is political good? A. Moral evil. Q. What is liberty? A. Licen- 
tiousness unbridled. Q. What is independence? A. Dependence 
on nothing. Q. Do we enjoy it? A. Yes. Q. Who gainjd it for 
us? A. The army. Q. How shall we reward them? A. Cheat 
'em. Q. Who loaned us money? A. France and Holland. 
Q. How shall we pay them? A. Laugh at them. Q. What is 
gratitude? A. Disposition to repay benefactors. Q. What is public 
gratitude? A. Forgetfulness of benefits. Q. What is public cred- 
it? A. Soldiers' notes at 30 per cent discount. Q. What is tax- 
ation? A. Much ado about nothing. Q. What is excise? A. Great 
cry and little wool. Q. What is computation? A. The Devil." 

The general popular distress is indicated by the fact that for 
several years over ninety per cent of the tax payers of Spring- 
field worked out their highway tax instead of paying it in 
currency. 

Green cites the case of Noah Copley of Westfield, who in 1783 
allowed his note for £4. 17s. 5d. to John Worthington to go to 
protest. The latter secured judgment with £1. 9s. 2d. in costs, 
"That is to say, to use round numbers, a man owing $24.00 had 
to pay $7.00 for the privilege of having the sheriff sell $24.00 worth 
of his goods." Elsewhere he says, "Writs of creditors almost 
confounded the courts, and the legal profession and the sheriffs 
were a byword and a hissing. The passing of the 'Tender Act' 
of 1782, by which neat cattle and other specified property could 
be offered to satisfy executions for debt, opened the door for 
greater irregularities. A war between rich and poor was precip- 
itated, and the judgment debtor and the judgment creditor 
crossed swords. More people were in debt than out of debt, 
and a good authority says that from 1784 to 1786 every fourth, if 
not every third, man was a defendant in writs of execution in 
Massachusetts." (Springfield, p. 308.) 



128 WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS 

Because lawyers were instruments of legal procedure against 
the debtor classes they were abused and denounced as enemies 
of society, refused the honor of election to offices of town and 
State, and in other ways treated spitefully. Many of them who 
had been eminent as members of the General Court were not re- 
turned in 1786, while their places were occupied by men greatly 
inferior in education and ability. Because the lawyers had profit- 
ed by the misfortunes of the poor, they were regarded as rogues, 
rascals and thieves, and to them was attributed the largest share 
of the ills under which the country groaned. 

A popular clamor arose for a new issue of paper currency by 
the State, mere fiat money which has always hastened in use to 
prove itself worth no more than the material on which it was 
printed. After all the distresses that the people had experienced 
from that nefarious delusion, they insisted repeatedly in success- 
ive conventions and by appeals to the General Court upon being 
allowed to try the fatal experiment yet again, in the self-deluding 
hope of getting relief thereby from some of the burdens which 
crushed them. They were on the verge of general bankruptcy, 
and cherished the absurd fancy that by a new inflation of the 
currency they might be restored to ease and prosperity. 

The series of conventions went merrily on, in a succession as 
endless as that of Banquo's ghosts, though Westfield seems to 
have tired of sending delegates. Pursuant to letters from sundry 
persons in Pelham, then the place of residence of Shays, a con- 
vention assembled at Hatfield, August 22, where fifty towns of 
the county were represented. A special town meeting met at 
Westfield, elected General Shepard, moderator, and took up the 
only other article in the warrant, "To take into consideration the 
contents of a Letter directed unto the selectmen of Westfield 
signed by Caleb West, Chairman of Deligates from eight Towns ; 
requesting a County Convention to be holden at Col. Seth Mur- 
rays in Hatfield on Tuesday the 22d day of Augt. Instant ; & act 
thereon as shall be thought most advisable." 

It was voted not to take the letter into consideration, and the 
meeting was dismissed. That convention' continued in session 
for three days, having at first voted itself constitutional as was 
customary. 

The shrewd plotters in the convention spent three days in vocif- 
erating harangues against existing order, supported the smug 
resolution, and confidently waited for the hotheads to execute 



THE SHAYS REBELLION 129 

their cherished designs. One of the three justices of the Court 
of Common Pleas which was thus defied was Samuel Mather, 
Esq., of Westfield. 

The weapons of the mob consisted variously of muskets, blud- 
geons and swords. A martial spirit was stimulated by drums 
and fifes played from time to time until the mob dispersed at 
midnight. As for the conduct of the rabble, it was said that it 
was marked with "less insolence and violence, and with more 
sobriety and good order than is generally expected from such a 
miscellaneous crowd bent on such an unlawful errand." 

Judd comments, "All is again afloat. No law, nor order. Prison 
full of criminals, but none can be punished. Monarchy is better 
than the tyranny of the mob. Tories appear with pleasant Coun- 
tenances others with long Faces. * * * What the consequences 
of these things none can tell. Destruction seems to await us." 

Governor Bowdoin was startled by the account of these law- 
less proceedings, menacing the very foundations of the Common- 
wealth, the more appalling because the overt action in North- 
ampton was repeated by a mob of 300 insurgents in Worcester 
during the succeeding week, and at about the same time a mob 
prevented the sitting of the Court of Common Pleas at Great 
Harrington. All over the State there was discontent, with bitter- 
ness, defiance of authority and treasonable speech. 

The Governor issued a vigorous proclamation calling upon all 
citizens, and civil, judicial and military officers to oppose such 
outbreaks, to repress mob violence and bring the insurgent lead- 
ers to justice. He called for a session of the Legislature to open 
on October 18, but later amended the order and summoned it 
a month earlier. 

It was during the autumn months of that year, 1786, that the 
two men who became the most conspicuous and authoritative 
leaders in the subsequent events began to exert themselves earn- 
estly to shape public opinion by tavern oratory and then to or- 
ganize and drill their adherents. Both men had served creditably 
as officers in the Revolutionary War. Luke Day, of West Spring- 
field, said by Holland to be "one of the strongest and most 
dangerous and persistent of the insurgent leaders," entered the 
army as captain, served through the whole war, and returned home 
at its close a major by brevet, but distressingly poor. He had 
considerable mental ability, though uneducated, and marked force- 
fulness as a popular speaker. His favorite place of resort was 

"W. Mass. — 9 



130 WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS 

the old Stebbins Tavern, and his most prominent henchmen were 
Adj. Elijah Day, Benjamin Ely and Dan Ludington. He de- 
clared to a gaping audience that "Liberty is for every man to 
do as he pleases, and to make other folks do as you please to 
have them." The definition must have been just as gratifying 
to the lawless crowd as though couched in correct English. 

He secured quite a following, and acted daily as a drillmaster 
on the West Springfield common, his motley battalion having 
been armed at first with hickory clubs and been marked by a 
sprig of hemlock which each redoubtable champion of liberty 
wore in his hatband. 

Daniel Shays was one of the many Americans of Irish ances- 
try who proved themselves sturdy patriots during the Revolution, 
but his name has been stigmatized by having a rebellion histor- 
ically attached to it. He was born in Hopkinton, Mass., in 1747. 

Trumbull, quoting from the Judd MSS. now in the Forbes Lib- 
rary, Northampton, gives an account of him supplied by Judge 
Hinckley, who came from Brookfield to Northampton in 1781 : 

Shays and a man named Cutler (afterward Gen. Cutler) lived as hired 
men with Mr. Hinckley's father at Brookfield for two years preceding the 
Revolutionary War. Both men were smart, active men, and received £16 
($53.33) per annum, when the common price was £15 ($50). Shays had 
much taste for the military, and the boys were in the habit of assembling 
with wooden guns and swords, and Shays would exercise them. Mr. 
Hinckley had often marched in that company. When the company of 
minute men was formed in 1774, Rufus Putnam was captain, and Shays 
and Cutler were sergeants. They had no bells and no cannon in Brook- 
field, and all alarms were given by conch shells. The day after the battle 
of Lexington the shells were sounded, and Captain Putnam's company soon 
marched. Captain Putnam was speedily promoted to the rank of major, 
and Shays and Cutler became officers in a short time. Shays continued 
in the army till 1780, when he had the rank of Lieutenant. When Lafay- 
ette came over he brought a large number of elegant swords which he gave 
to the subordinate officers of the army. Shays received one of them, but 
as he had a good one already he sold the one given him by Lafayette. This 
excited the indignation of his company and of the officers of his regiment, 
and an outcry was made about his meanness in selling the gift of Lafayette. 
The officers refused to associate with him, and talked about trying him by 
Court-Martial for his base conduct. He resigned and came home much 
incensed against the other officers and even against Washington. He was 
a disappointed man. The people of Brookfield censured him, and even 
his father-in-law, Capt. Daniel Gilbert, whose daughter he married after 
the war commenced, blamed him, and made severe remarks about his sell- 
ing the sword. He remained in Brookfield a few years and then removed 
to Pelham. 



THE SHAYS REBELLION 131