A great cheer went up, but General Shepard cut them short. He mounted the steps of the arsenal’s wooden barracks and barked out: “Make your huzzahs short, men! Prepare your kits and your mounts. We leave within the hour—north bound, on the trail of the mobbers!”
Connecticut Valley
Western Massachusetts
January 30, 1787
General Benjamin Lincoln’s men crossed the Connecticut River, marching northward along its west bank. His cavalry, under Colonel Gideon Barr, advanced gingerly upon its ice-hardened surface. General Shepard’s militia trudged up the Connecticut’s eastern shore.
Lincoln and Shepard moved fast, but the dispirited Regulator force moved faster, bolting out of Chicopee. Those who remained plundered several houses in South Hadley and looted two barrels of rum at Amherst. More men deserted along the way. It seemed now as though only a couple hundred remained. Shays himself retreated to his ramshackle Pelham homestead. Ensconced among his fellow hardscrabble Scotch-Irish neighbors, Shays bided his time. Unsure of his next move, and burdened with an “army” more inclined to shouting than shooting, his options had grown ever more limited.
This was not at all what he had planned.
Luke Day remained in West Springfield. He’d taken the precaution of posting a guard at the ferry house, but when Lincoln’s army approached, the guard, along with the bulk of his panic-stricken men, had fled, abandoning their supplies and muskets so they might run that much faster. They fled through Southampton, and then Northampton, as quickly as they could, hoping they might find refuge in the Independent Republic of Vermont before Lincoln found them.
Major General Lincoln’s Headquarters
Hadley, Massachusetts
January 30, 1787
Benjamin Lincoln was encamped at Hadley, barely ten miles to Shays’ west. Lincoln could have advanced on him at Pelham, but chose not to. The township was too rugged and too heavily defended—swarming with the greatest concentration of “Shaysites” known to Christendom.
Benjamin Lincoln would not attack Pelham. At least, not yet.
Instead, he sat down to compose a letter. Perhaps, he thought, blessed reason might finally work to end this unfortunate episode and an offer of mercy might go further than a twelve-pound cannon shot.
And so, in a fine hand, he wrote to Captain Shays.
Whether you are convinced or not of your error in flying to arms, I am fully persuaded that you now realize that you are not able to execute your original purposes. Your resources are few, your force inconsiderable, and hourly decreasing from the dissatisfaction of your men. You are in a post where you have neither cover nor supplies, and in a situation in which you cannot hesitate for a moment to disband your deluded followers.
If you do not disband, I must approach and apprehend your most influential men. Should you attempt to fire upon the troops of Government, the consequences must be fatal to many of your men, the least guilty. To prevent bloodshed, you will communicate to your privates, that, if they will instantly lay down their arms, surrender themselves to Government, and take and subscribe the oath of allegiance to this Commonwealth, they shall be recommended to the General Court for mercy.
If you should either withhold this information from them, or suffer your people to fire upon our approach, you must be answerable for all the ills which may exist in consequence thereof.
Well, Lincoln sighed, let’s pray that that works.
Regulators’ Headquarters
William Conkey’s Tavern
Pelham, Massachusetts
January 30, 1787
Daniel Shays figured that if he had to hide out from General Lincoln’s army, old William Conkey’s Tavern, remote even by Pelham standards, was as good a place as any.
Particularly when the fugitive was also its most distinguished patron: Daniel Shays.
Gone were the days when Shays exhorted his “troops” with vain or glorious boasts. “My boys,” he had lectured them not long before, “you are going to fight for liberty. If you wish to know what liberty is, I will tell you: It is for every man to do what he pleases, to make other folks do as you please to have them, and to keep folks from serving the devil.”
If that was the definition of liberty, then these men were experiencing the opposite. Few at Pelham were now doing what pleased them—instead they hunkered down to defend their very homes.
Shays pondered Lincoln’s offer. He didn’t particularly like his opponent’s tone or his threats, but an offer of pardon had its charms. Except, and here Shays read very, very carefully, the offer clearly extended only to noncommissioned recruits. That didn’t do much for him or for his fellow officers like Adam Wheeler. A “general pardon” would be necessary. Until then, it was best to stall for time.
Pelham, Jan. 30th, 1787
To Gen. Lincoln, commanding the Government troops at Hadley,
Sir: However unjustifiable the measures we have adopted in taking up arms against the government, we have been forced to do so. The people are willing to lay down their arms, on the condition of a general pardon, and return to their respective homes. They are unwilling to stain the land, which we, in the late war, purchased at so dear a rate, with the blood of our brethren and neighbors.
Therefore, we pray that hostilities may cease on your part, until our united prayers may be presented to the General Court, and we receive an answer. If this request may be complied with, the government shall meet with no resistance from the people, but let each army occupy the post where they are now.
Daniel Shays, Captain.
Well, Shays sighed, let’s pray that that works.
It didn’t.
Major General Lincoln’s Headquarters
Hadley, Massachusetts
February 3, 1787
General Benjamin Lincoln was not about to let Daniel Shays off so easily. He didn’t trust Shays to not go back on his word and attack his army. Nor did he trust that Shays would not fade away into the hills to fight a guerilla war against the government.
But, above all, Lincoln didn’t trust his own army’s ability to play a waiting game against these blasted Regulators.
My army is falling apart! Lincoln thought to himself as he finished reading a dispatch from Major General John Paterson, his commander in the Berkshires. The antigovernment “frenzy,” Paterson reported, infested the regions bordering New York and made him fear for his safety. He was demanding reinforcements.
“General,” Lincoln’s cavalry commander, Colonel Burt, interrupted, “I must have a word with you. I was unable to send out patrols again tonight . . . the rate of desertions is simply too high.” The normally mild-mannered Lincoln flung Patterson’s letter to the floor. “Desertions! Those madmen in the Berkshires!” he screamed. “And discipline is breaking down. Looting even here in Hadley—by my own men! Damn it, this has to end!”
Both armies—the government’s and the Regulators’—were quickly collapsing. Lincoln’s militia enlistments would expire in late February. Victory now seemed to be a question of which side would dissolve first.
How, thought Lincoln, am I going to explain this to Governor Bowdoin? Or to General Washington?
“General Lincoln?” a snow-covered lieutenant interrupted.
“What do you want?” Lincoln snapped.
“Uh . . . we’ve . . . we’ve learned that Shays has evacuated his Pelham stronghold and has reached Petersham for the night.”
“Petersham? Where in tarnation is that?”
“It’s about thirty miles northeast of here, toward Gardner.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Lincoln suddenly, very softly and calmly. A plan welled inside him. “Gentlemen, alert the troops, we are headed for Petersham . . . tonight . . . now!”
“Now?” stammered Colonel Burt. “It’s nearly eight o’clock. We’d have to travel through the night—and in the most hostile territory.”
“All the better to march by night, then,” answered Lincoln. “Our enemies will slumber peacefull
y and wake to some very unwelcome company.”
En Route to Petersham
New Salem, Massachusetts
February 3, 1787
General Lincoln and his troops had set off late but in fair weather. At 2:00 A.M., however, and about halfway to Petersham, that changed quickly: Veritable blizzard descended upon them. Temperatures dropped, sheets of snow drifted, and the wind blew so violently that it blinded his caravan. Soon frostbite struck.
Lincoln’s men wondered what sort of madman had delivered them into such disaster, but they kept marching. They had no real choice.
Regulator Encampment
Petersham, Massachusetts
February 4, 1787
The weather was equally horrid at Petersham: freezing temperatures with near zero visibility. Daniel Shays’ men may have shivered, but at least they shivered with a temporary sense of security. No one would dare attack them in this weather. Only a lunatic would dispatch an army in such conditions. Plus, it was now the Sabbath—a day of peace, when armies sheathed their swords and knelt in prayer. They rested without fear and without nearly enough sentries to warn them that trouble approached.
At 9:00 A.M. it was not merely trouble that approached, it was mayhem.
• • •
The sun had long since risen, but many Regulators still slumbered, catching up on the sleep that had been so hard to come by lately. Others tarried at breakfast. Suddenly, Shepard’s militia burst upon them, easily pushing past the few sentries on duty and into the rebel camp, catching its inhabitants totally by surprise.
“Militia!” came the shout, as men scrambled to retrieve their unloaded muskets.
Then, a more frightened alarm shattered the morning’s bitter cold air: “Artillery!”
Somehow, Shepard and Colonel Barr’s frostbitten men had dragged with them two heavy field pieces. These were now squarely aimed at the Regulators. “Cannon!” cried the surprised men. Their screams brought back visions of the bloody debacle that had visited them at the arsenal, of lead tearing through flesh, and of Ezekiel Root, Ariel Webster, Jabez Spicer, and John Hunter, all dead or dying upon the frozen Springfield ground.
Once again, the former mobbers fled without firing a shot. Panic-stricken, they simply ran for their lives, though some did not run fast enough. Lincoln took 150 of them—mostly privates—prisoner. They had little will to resist further, but Lincoln had no manpower to waste guarding them. He let most go home on parole.
Daniel Shays and Adam Wheeler did run fast enough, north on the Athol Road. Dreams of capturing Boston had long since left their minds; they now thought only of finding asylum in Vermont.
The Meetinghouse
Lenox, Massachusetts
December 6, 1787
“Attention!”
The guards at Lenox’s Meetinghouse snapped to strict attention, and so did the 250 spectators present.
After all, they were there for serious business.
The rebellion had not formally died after Petersham, but it had been mortally wounded. Some skirmishing continued and some looting and hostage-taking here and there, primarily at Stockbridge, near the New York border. In late February, some real fighting had finally occurred in Sheffield: five men—three Regulators, a hostage they had taken, and a militiaman—were killed, and 30 others were wounded. Colonel John Ashley’s local militia captured another 150 rebels.
Some in Boston thirsted for vengeance against the Shaysites. Leading the charge was one of John Hancock’s oldest enemies and one of the revolution’s most ardent patriots, Samuel Adams. “In monarchies,” Adams argued, “the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished. But the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.”
But most people simply wanted the door closed on the whole sorry episode. From Paris, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend, asking, “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
In the end, Shays, Day, Shattuck, all of their fellow insurgent officers, and nearly all of their men, received pardons. Their blood would not be shed.
But not everyone proved so lucky.
• • •
The drums beat a dirge, and the crowd stood bareheaded and silent as two young men stood side by side upon Lenox’s rude gallows. Stout nooses were fixed upon their necks: twenty-two-year-old John Bly, a “transient” of Tyringham, and Charles Rose, a Suffolk laborer and occasional teacher in his early twenties.
They might have been tried and sentenced for treason, insurrection, or sedition, but the authorities had decided otherwise. These two rebels would instead hang for a robbery committed at Lanesboro in the waning, sputtering days of the rebellion, when armies no longer marched and the most valiant protests the rebellion mounted were burglaries.
Bly and Rose, foolishly deluding themselves into believing that Shays would invade Massachusetts from exile in Vermont, had stolen weapons and powder at Lanesboro to facilitate Shays’ phantom attack. Now they stood trembling upon the gallows. John Hancock, miraculously healthy enough to return to the governorship now that the worst had past, had rejected their petitions for mercy. Stephen West, pastor of the First Congregational Church in nearby Stockbridge, ministered to the condemned but had little good to say of them. “As you have set yourselves against the community,” he scolded, “so the community now sets themselves against you.”
Bly and Rose, scapegoats for a stillborn rebellion, and a deadly warning to anyone else who might still harbor similar sentiments, had one privilege left to them: a few last words. The English-born Bly, his voice choking with emotion, chose not to condemn those about to execute him, but instead those firebrands whose angry words and reckless deeds had enticed men like him into this misbegotten adventure. “Our fate,” he cried, “is a loud and solemn lesson to you who have excited the people to rise against the government.”
A constable placed a hood over Bly’s head, and another over Rose’s. Two traps sprang. A pair of bodies plummeted downward, and the necks of two very young Regulators loudly and sickeningly snapped.
Shays’ Rebellion was over, now as cold and dead as the two young burglars hanging in Lenox.
• • •
Far to the south, upon the fertile banks of Virginia’s Potomac River, George Washington was done with his duties of chairing a convention in Philadelphia. He continued to ponder what other lessons—besides Bly’s dying testament—might be learned from this botched rebellion.
America, he knew, required a federal government strong enough to resist the kind of lawlessness that had erupted in Massachusetts. The new Constitution he had played a vital role in drafting would be necessary to protect both the government and the governed.
He hoped that James Madison, his new friend, who was now on his way to the Virginia Ratification Convention in Richmond, might be able to help him finally achieve this goal. Virginia’s vote would be crucial in deciding whether the new Constitution would succeed or fail. If it failed, Washington feared that the chaos that had briefly bubbled to the surface in Massachusetts would grow into a roaring boil and scorch the entire Union.
3
The Virginia Convention:
Compromising for the Constitution
Richmond, Virginia
State House
Fourteenth and Cary Streets
June 2, 1788
Patrick Henry smelled a rat.
And his nostrils had been twitching for quite some time.
Henry, the popular former governor of Virginia, drummed his fingers on the side of his heavy oak chair as he listened to crusty old judge Edmund Pendleton cough and wheeze. The air was heavy with anticipation as they waited for the Virginia convention, called to ratify the new federal Constitution, to finally begin.
Henry sensed that everything was now hurtling down to the wire
. America had won the Revolution, but it seemed that she was losing the peace. The Articles of Confederation had bound the rebellious colonies together for the last seven years, but it had created something more akin to a social club than a nation—and a poorly run club at that.
Under the Articles, the Second Continental Congress had very limited powers, and directly taxing citizens was not one of them. As a result, it could hardly pay the interest on its debts. Hat in hand, Congress was forced to beg individual states for money like a club treasurer harassing deadbeat members for back dues.
Money wasn’t the only issue. An “every state for itself” mentality meant that the country as a whole could barely field an army, but eleven different states boasted their own navies. A violent uprising—“Shays’ Rebellion”—had torn apart western Massachusetts just a year earlier without any national military to quell it. Many people worried that Massachusetts was just the beginning.
With the American experiment now hanging in the balance, many leaders argued that the Articles should be changed to allow for a stronger federal government before it all fell apart. A convention met at Independence Hall in Philadelphia to work out the details, but the delegates had quickly determined that the Articles couldn’t be fixed. They were broken beyond repair. Some delegates, led by Virginia’s James Madison, went rogue and drafted an entirely new document with a new set of rules that established a very different relationship between American citizens and their government.
They called it “the Constitution.”
These delegates, the “Federalists,” believed they had no other choice. Patrick Henry, on the other hand, thought otherwise. The man who had challenged Britain, and, indeed, the entire universe, to give him liberty or death thirteen years earlier believed the greatest crisis currently haunting America was the possible ratification of this new Constitution. He had avoided the convention in Philadelphia where the monstrosity had been born, but now it had come to him in Virginia and he could ignore it no longer.
Henry knew that the next month might very well decide everything. The Constitution had made a lot of progress since Philadelphia. Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maryland had already ratified the document. South Carolina might do so at any moment. Only a single additional state’s ratification was necessary for the two-thirds majority needed for the Constitution to take effect—a much lower bar than the Articles had been held to; they had required unanimous approval.