Shays' Rebellion Chapter 1

CHAPTER VII 
THE SHAYS REBELLION 

It is hardly possible for people of this era to realize the extent 
or power of the wave of discontent which swept over the north- 
eastern section of the United States immediately following the war 
of the Revolution. In Western Massachusetts, the great uprising 
was called "The Shays Rebellion" after a man of the locality 
named Daniel Shays who believed himself a deliverer, and who 
worked with astonishing success upon the feelings of the dissatis- 
fied. Shays entered the army in 1770, a young Hopkinton farmer 
of thirty. He took advantage of the reaction following the war 
to group the malcontents together; to listen sympathetically to the 
recital of the varied and partly imagined wrongs, to impress them 
with his knowledge of military tactics ; and to lead them to believe 
that a crusade led by him and by those he would choose was the 
most likely road to permanent peace and prosperity. It was a 
perfectly natural period of disorder and chaos in which the gen- 
erally impoverished people of the region now found themselves. 
A formidable number seized upon the plans of "the deliverer 
Shays" as being the only way out. 

Trade was flat ; Continental paper-money was largely worth- 
less ; there was no demand for labor, and no way in which the 
value of any kind of property could be appraised. People became 
easily excited and local disturbances were frequent and serious. 
The State Constitution adopted in 1780 was viewed with pro- 
nounced distrust by a considerable number of the people. The 
"gaols" were filled largely with "poor debtors," thus deprived 
of any possible chance to pay their just bills. Each of the several 
towns of the region was financially embarrassed, chiefly because 
of the frequent levies upon its small resources to support the 
army, and for often repeated requisitions for both citizens and the 
supplies necessary to keep them alive. 

A man whose credit was suspected found his property covered by at- 
tachments at once, and in the condition of things then existing a very 
slight circumstance excited suspicion. Litigation became general. The 
State was showered with executions, and large amounts of property were 
sold for almost nothing to satisfy them. In the unreasoning excitement of 
the time the courts, lawyers, and sheriffs were denounced in the wildest 
terms as the promoters of the suffering that men were inflicting upon each 

W. Mass. — 8 



114 WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS 

other. A cry arose that the courts ought to be abolished. Threats were 
made that the courts should not be allowed to sit, that no more suits should 
be entered and no more executions issued. 

Thus it came about that the first overt act of resistance to legal 
authority led by a Massachusetts "rebel," was put down by the 
firm hand and good generalship of Westfield's most famous mil- 
itary son, General William Shepard. 

Such a very important politico-military disturbance, involving a 
large number of inhabitants of Western Massachusetts, deserves a 
more complete review than has been published until quite recently. 
The present compilation has the advantage in this respect over 
all others in that the painstaking research work embraced in sev- 
eral chapters from the "Revolutionary Period" of Dr. Lockwood's 
two-volume "History of Westfield" has been placed at our dis- 
posal and the following account is taken almost bodily from it. 
Details never before included in any account of the "Shays Re- 
bellion" have been ably and thoroughly arrayed in the "Westfield" 
book ; and in the interest of preserving here the most accurate 
account in existence of the remarkable affair which involved many 
others besides the four principal characters. General Shepard of 
Westfield, Captain Daniel Shays, of General Rufus Putnam's 3d 
Massachusetts Regiment, Captain Luke Day of West Springfield, 
and Samuel Ely, a former minister of Somers, Connecticut. As 
early as August 11, 1779, the following significant item appears 
upon the town records of Westfield : "Voted that the Petition 
prefered by Benjamin Winchel & Others for the Purpose of Stop- 
ing the Courts of Justice in this Country be not sustained." 

Another momentous item appears in that meeting's record : "It 
was moved and seconded to chose a Delegate to go to the Con- 
vention at Concord next October agreeable to a Request sent 
by the Town of Boston, for the Purpose of regulating & Stating 
the Prizes of the Articles of Life & it passed in the negative." 

A still more important item in the same record is the appoint- 
ment of Colonel John Moseley to represent the town at the 
September 1st Convention at Cambridge "for the purpose of 
forming a new Constitution or Form of Government;" — and nine 
persons were appointed to instruct him. 

September 29th following this it was voted "to see if the Town 
would come into some Measurs with Regard to stating the Prizes 
of the Necessaries of Life." A committee of seven consisting of 
Captain John Gray, Deacon Joseph Root, Lieutenant Zachariah 



THE SHAYS REBELLION 115 

Bush, Lieutenant David Sacket, David Weller, Jr., Aaron King 
and Martin Root, — was appointed "to procure a Copy of the Pro- 
ceedings of the last Convention held at Northampton & make 
such alterations in the same as they should think proper & re- 
port to the Town." 

The convention referred to had been held at the Court House 
in Northampton, September 8, in response to a call sent to every 
Hampshire town by the Committees of Correspondence of the 
towns of Hadley, Hatfield, South Hadley and Amherst, having 
as its object "that there might be a uniformity of prices in the 
several towns." There is no record of the result reached, but it 
was rejected at a subsequent meeting in Westfield. 

Only five Hampshire towns sent delegates to the October con- 
vention at Concord. 

The first convention of 1782 was held at Hadley, and it was 
for his utterances there and elsewhere that Samuel Ely was ar- 
raigned before Major Hawley in Northampton, February 14, to 
answer the charge of being guilty of "treasonable practices." He 
soon became notorious and fomented most serious disturbances. 
Capt. Daniel Sacket and Lieut. Falley were appointed to repre- 
sent Westfield at that convention. Judd in his Diary character- 
izes its action as having been "ill done" and a "scandel to the 
country." At the March meeting, 1782, at Westfield, Capt. Dan- 
iel Sacket was appointed a delegate to a convention to be held 
at Hadley the first Monday in April. What was probably intend- 
ed was the meeting held at Hatfield on the first Tuesday in April. 
Thirty-six towns were there represented and the sittings of the 
convention extended over several days. 

At that Convention on a motion "to request the Superior County 
Court to forbear giving judgment in civil causes, except the con- 
dition make it appear that he is in danger of losing his debt, or 
when the parties are agreed," the delegates from the towns voted 
respectively as follows : Yes — Granville, Norwich, Granby, 
Whately, Montague, Shelburne, Charlemont, Greenwich, Conway, 
Westfield, Palmer, Pelham, Leverett, Ludlow, Ashfield; Nay — 
Springfield, Wilbraham, Deerfield, Monson, Blandford, North- 
ampton, Southampton, Hadley, Westhampton, Hatfield, Goshen, 
Cummington, Williamsburg, South Hadley, Amherst, Sunderland, 
Shutesbury, Worthington, Chesterfield, Greenfield, Belchertown. 

Every grievance under which any member imagined that he or 
others suffered was aired. Sweeping changes in the administra- 



116 WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS 

tion of justice were demanded; and it was voted "that there be 
no County Court of the sessions of the Peace." 

With that to support him, Ely, who had been let off without 
penalty by Major Hawley, instigated mob violence against the 
April sitting of the Court at Northampton. Samuel Ely had 
posed as a minister at Somers, Conn., but had so harried and di- 
vided the church as to be finally expelled from its pulpit. Holland 
declares of him, "He was a vehement, brazen-faced declaimer, 
abounding in his hypocritical pretensions to piety, and an indus- 
trious sower of discord; and he delighted in nothing more than 
in sowing jealousies between the poor and the rich." Dwight, 
in his "Travels," says that "he possessed the spirit, and so far as 
his slender abilities would permit, the arts of a demagogue in 
an unusual degree. He was voluable, vehement in address, bold, 
persevering, active, brazen-faced in wickedness." (Vol. 2. pp. 
275-6.) 

Early in the winter he had asserted fiercely at Sunderland that 
the people must "throw up our constitution" and that he "had 
got a constitution in his pockett that the angel Gabriel could not 
find fault with." He declared that "the Justices of the Supreme 
Court have gone beyond their power and should not sitt, nor the 
General Court should not sitt." For months he went ranting 
against the courts throughout the county. When the Court of 
General Sessions of the Peace began its sitting, April 4, and dur- 
ing subsequent days, he incited the people to violence, but could 
not induce them to criminal action. A guard of men under Cap- 
tain Allen protected the court while Ely continued his bravado 
and inflammatory harangues. 

Judd notes under date of April 12: "About 5 o'clock in the 
afternoon a Committee from the Mob came into Court. About 
half an hour after sent a petition and before Dark came in a body. 
But a guard under Capt. Allen prevent their coming into the 
Court House. Ely was soon after taken and Examined and then 
bound to appear at the next Superior Court which took after Mid- 
night. Ely was in no ways subdued but I suppose the rest were." 

He was afterwards indicted by the Grand Jury and May 6 he 
was sentenced to pay a fine of £50, suffer six months' imprison- 
ment, and recognize in the sum of £200, with sufficient sureties in 
the like sum for his keeping the peace and being of good behavior 
for the term of three years, pay the costs of prosecution and stand 
committed till this sentence is performed. 



THE SHAYS REBELLION 117