Shays' Rebellion Chapter 1

 

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.