USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > Springfield, 1636-1886 : history of town and city, including an account of the quarter-millennial celebration at Springfield, Mass., May 25 and 26, 1886 > Part 28
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55
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DEFENDING THE COURT-HOUSE AGAINST SHAYS'S INSURGENTS.
the insurgent conventions. The Legislature was flooded with petitions from suffering towns ; and if it had not been for armed resistance in Hampshire the General Court would not have passed, as they did, a bill authorizing the governor and council to imprison disorderly per- sons without bail or mainprise. A bill offering pardon to all taking the oath of allegiance was likewise passed, but to no purpose.
Daniel Shays and Luke Day took a bold step at Springfield, Sep-
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tember 26, by interfering with the session of the Supreme Judicial Court, Chief Justice Cushing presiding. General Shepard discreetly prevented a collision with the forces of Shays, as they marched and countermarched before the Springfield court-house, or rendezvoused at Stebbins's tavern, in North Main street ; and after the court had adjourned, and had also abandoned the October term at Great Bar- rington, he withdrew his militia companies to the arsenal, and the Shays men returned to their homes, well pleased that no indictments had been found against them. Three weeks later Daniel Shays issued an order from Pelham requiring all his men to arm and furnish them- selves with sixty rounds. He proceeded to Rutland, and superintended the interruption of the courts at Worcester and elsewhere in Decem- ber. He turned up in Springfield on the 22d of that month, and found the judges of the Court of Common Pleas an easy prey to the clubs, drums, muskets, and threats of his men.
The legal profession continued to be the object of bitter attack. Demagogues and lampoonists plied their trade industriously. The following lines were dropped upon the floor of the Springfield court- house : -
" If Sampson's foxes tail by tail With firebrands were set running, My God. what havock must prevail, When Lawyers' tails are burning !
" Quoth Jack, ' Tis true as any fact Established in the nation. Unless their tails were often wet They'd cause the conflagration.""
While these sorry matters divided brother and brother in the village of Springfield, and set friend against friend, the Springfield town- meeting was not swamped by the debtor party. It voted that the in- crease of paper money at a time when it was already a burden was
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"a preposterous and ridiculous remedy ; " it opposed a revision of the State constitution on account of the passions of the people so danger- onsly excited, but it called upon the Legislature for remedial measures that would remove the "imaginary as well as the real grievances of the people." These resolutions had been passed in September, when the Legislature met ; but, as has been seen, they produced no effect upon the people.
The insurgents found hearing in the papers, and lond-mouthed men declaimed in the taverns of Springfield and elsewhere against the riot act, the expensive mode of collecting debts, and the payment of mon- eys raised by impost and excise to discharge the interest of govern- ment securities, instead of the foreign debt. These agitators, who sported the hemlock twig, had a scheme of repudiation on hand con- cerning government securities, which speculators had bought up from 2s. to 6s. Sd. on the pound. They not only objected to applying the revenues from impost and excise to meet the interest, which in some cases amounted to more than the price paid for the securities, but they proposed to repudiate or refund upon the basis of the market value of the securities. Army officers who remained in the service were prom- ised by Congress half-pay for life, but this was soon changed to pay for five years ; and this, considering the depreciation of paper money, made the fate of the officers doubly unhappy. This commutation added another harsh string to the orchestral discord that assaulted the unhappy air.
Boston itself was not untinged with the spirit of revolt, and the moneyed men of that city found that the time had come for them to put their hands in their pockets and furnish the sinews of war. After it had been decided to call out the troops the commissary- general reported that he could get no supplies without cash, and of this the treasury was empty. General Lincoln immediately visited a prominent Boston club, and laid the case before them. A subscrip- tion was started the following morning, the governor heading the list, and the money was raised before sunset. An army of four
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thousand five hundred was collected in short order, and General Lincoln prepared for his long march.
To show how some of the towns felt the strain, it may be said that the remote town of Rowe, December 4, 1786, " being Repeatedly Requested to Join in the Dispute between the Court and those called the Regulating party," but not being able to get at the merits of the controversy, recommended that as many as "can conveniently march " should repair to Springfield, and after hearing the particu- lars " join that party as they shall Judge to be in the right of the cause, they acting entirely for themselves in that matter."
Governor Bowdoin in his letter of instructions to General Lincoln said, " You are to consider yourself in all your military offensive operations constantly as under the direction of the civil officer, saving where any armed force shall appear and oppose your marching to execute these orders." General Lincoln protested against these instructions, being placed as he was under the orders of the local civil authorities wherever he might be ; and the governor, after con- sulting the council, wrote : " As you are accompanied by Gentlemen of the Law, who are also Justices of the Peace, and as you can have a number of Deputy Sheriffs to attend you by applying to the High Sheriff to depute some of your own Corps or others as you shall judge proper, the Council apprehend there is scarcely a sup- posable case, to which your powers, as expressed in my orders, do not extend."
Lincoln turned up with his battalions at Worcester, January 22, and protected the courts with little difficulty ; Daniel Shays, after sending to the governor a pacific message intending to mislead the authorities, essayed the difficult feat of capturing the federal arsenal at Springfield. He made a dash from Rutland with over one thousand men, indifferently armed with guns, but thoroughly equipped with an incendiary vocabulary. He reached Wilbraham on the 24th, and the women and children of that terrified community were transferred to Longmeadow for safety. General Lincoln was two days' march in
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the rear of Shays, and the plan was to overpower General Shepard before the eastern troops came up. Eli Parsons, with four hundred Berkshire insurgents, was at Chicopee ; while Luke Day was the only man among the rebels who made any pretence at military discipline. He was resting under arms at West Springfield with a company of four hundred, whom he kept in good temper by occasional orations of the oppressions of the government. Shepard was thus confronted by about two thousand rebels, twice his number; but there was divided counsel in the ranks of the enemy. Shays ordered Day to attack on the 25th, but the latter said he would not be ready to move until the 26th. This answer miscarried, and thus Shays advanced on the eventful 25th. Day meantime demanded that the militia lay down their arms, not knowing that Shays was already on the march.
General Shepard was doing his best to hold an ugly people in hand. Public sentiment was against him, although in this immediate vicinity the majority of those who spoke their mind were in favor of the government. He did not really take in the situation, however, until about a fortnight before the Armory Hill fight. As late as January 12, General Shepard wrote Lincoln from Northampton that two hundred or three hundred men would be ample to defend the stores at Springfield, and that he himself would be ready to march to Worcester to defend the courts there. He adds : " I can appre- hend no danger of so desperate and senseless a measure as burning towns or an attack on unembodied inhabitants ; and Springfield, besides containing stores of exceeding great consequence, is in the line of intelligence and perhaps of march, and has buildings to accommodate a considerable part of the men, which are to be found nowhere else in this county." In speaking of supplies he says the rum and spirituous liquors must be forwarded from Boston, as there was little to be had in Hampshire county ; and he added that " the men cannot be kept together especially in this season without a daily allowance of spiritous liquors."
General Shepard, who had taken possession of Springfield on the
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18th, found that all the insurgents in the southern part of the county had received orders to assemble at Palmer, and that the Berkshire and the Northern Hampshire men were directed to march to Pelham, Greenwich, and Hardwick. There was a pressing need of money at Springfield for the support of the soldiers, not a cent subscribed at Boston having been forwarded here. No man in Springfield felt disposed to loan Shepard money to any amount. He asked for at least £2,000, and he remarked: " I do not think the men can be kept together long unless they are pretty well supplied with rum, etc., and a little money." Many of the militia in this county were prevented from assembling by their disaffected neighbors. As neither Congress nor General Knox had given permission to take arms from the arsenal, General Shepard's men were poorly equipped. With some bitterness Shepard writes to Lincoln the day after taking possession at the arsenal : " It will be very disagreeable for me to be defeated by such a wicked banditti when I am guarding the arms of the Union, and command for the purpose of supporting the dignity of the government when I had no arms to defend myself even from insult."
Shepard began to feel very much concerned on the 21st, and he sent to General Lincoln, at Worcester, for a flying column to fol- low in the rear of Shays. He was cut off from Berkshire by the vigilance of Luke Day, and his lack of communication with North- ampton led Caleb Strong, of Northampton, to write Lincoln that insurgents had taken possession of Chicopee bridge, and had capt- ured a provision train on its way to Springfield for the militia. This party was from Berkshire, and was commanded by Eli Parsons. Shepard himself did not hear of this until the 23d. The weather was bitterly cold, and Shepard called upon Lincoln for at least four hundred men to be forwarded in sleighs. Shepard's provisions were limited to a five days' stock, and the loss of his provision train was especially disturbing. He had ordered " two loads of rum," to be consigned to Jonathan Dwight. Money was also scarce. Not only
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were his men unpaid, but he was compelled to be personally respon- sible for what fuel and forage he needed. It must have been dis- tressing to Lincoln to be informed by Shepard that his force " could not continue in the field much longer " unless money was sent him. This was three days before the Shays rencounter. Maj. Levi Shepard, of Northampton, was his commissary, and Col. William Smith, of Springfield, the quartermaster, -two men who must have been at their wits' end to meet the emergency, with a disturbed or a disaf- fected and hostile community about them. Shepard had learned that three hundred insurgents from Berkshire lodged at Northampton on the night of the 22d. He was not at all reassured by the silence of Lincoln, who had not answered the five messages sent east in quick succession. Shays, Day, and Parsons had completely cut Springfield off from all approaches, neither troops nor supplies being obtainable, and the insurgents were enjoying the contents of Shepard's provi- sion train. He would have retired to a stronger position if it had not been for the arsenal. As it was he wrote Lincoln once more, saying, " If you cannot grant me any reinforcements or relief I shall try to work out my own salvation before it is too late. Shays's and Day's forces are about two thousand strong. Before to-morrow morn- ing I expect the trial will be made to force me from this post. It is no time for delay ; your operations must be quick and spirited, or they will answer no purpose. That man's party is increasing fast."
Luke Day had scoured the country on the west side, and his sen- tries and reconnoitring parties were very annoying. He had even deployed a body in the Longmeadow direction and secured many prisoners. He captured General Parks and Dr. Whitney in sleighs, and had taken a loyal man in Longmeadow out of his bed and shut him up with other prisoners of war at West Springfield.
Shays was at Palmer on the 23d with eleven hundred noisy men. The insurgent officers held a council of war there, and a friend of the government overheard the proceedings. It was decided to join Day's forces and to attack the arsenal before Lincoln could come to
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Shepard's relief. Lieut. Aaron Graves, of Palmer, hastened to inform Lincoin of these facts. Adam Wheeler did what he could to detain Lincoln, by asking for a " Conference " in order to " bring about a Settlement with the Government."
Deputy Sheriff King rode through the crusted snow across fields from Wilbraham to the Stony Hill road on the 25th, drawing blood from the legs of his horse, and warned General Shepard in less than an hour : but Shays did not appear on the Boston road, in view of the armory, until late in the afternoon. Shepard sent several messages of warning to Shays not to advance, but received only insolence and defiance for his pains. At a hundred yards a howitzer was discharged each side of the advancing forces ; and, a few minutes later, a shot, at short range, was levelled directly at the column. Ezekiel Root and Ariel Webster, of Gill, and John Spicer, of Leyden, were killed, and John Hunter, of Shelburne, mortally wounded. A scene of ridiculous con- fusion followed. Not a return shot was fired at the militia, and about twelve hundred very-much-affrighted men raced for their dear lives toward Ludlow. The killed and wounded were taken to a house opposite the site of Olivet Church. The well near this house is still to be seen in the cellar of the arsenal.
General Lincoln reached Springfield on the 27th with the main body of his troops. At nine o'clock of the 25th the news of Shays's defeat had reached Palmer, and Colonel Baldwin had sent word to Lincoln that Captain Shaw reported that the insurgents made the attack about four o'clock, "on the plain, near the magazine."
General Lincoln gives the following account of the movements of his troops upon reaching Springfield : -
Part of them with the light horse I moved up the river on the ice, with the in- tention to prevent the junction of Shays & Day, & if that was not attempted, to cut off Day's retreat. With the other part of the troops I moved across the river, in front of his gnard. They soon turned out, & retreated to his main body. They retreated before us about half a mile, then made some disposition to attack, but soon left that post & retreated to a high piece of ground in their rear, where
,
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they were met by the Light horse; thence they fled in every direction, but most of them reached Northampton, about 20 miles distant. This left Shays' right uncovered, & indneed him to move the same night to Amherst, twenty miles North of Springfield. At 3 o'clock in the morning of the 29th we moved toward Amherst, where Shays had been joined by Day. On our arrival in the borders of the town, the rear of Shays' force left it, some few fell into our hands; he then took post at Pelham. east from Amherst; we filed off to the left & took post in Hadley & Hatfield on the river.
Lincoln said at Pittsfield, after the scattering of the insurgents in western Massachusetts, that he found that " the people in general had been in arms, or had been abettors of those who were : and that their obstinacy was not exceeded by anything but their ignorance of their own situation." Governor Bowdoin in February offered £150 for the arrest of Shays, and £100 each for the arrest of Adam Wheeler, Luke Day, and Eli Parsons. Day was eventually brought to Springfield, a prisoner, but Shays made good his escape.
This region round about was for some weeks made lively with sun- dry martial episodes. Gen. John Peterson, at Stockbridge, with three hundred men, was so annoyed with insurgents hovering around and distressing loyal people, that he made a raid on the 29th of January, and succeeded in capturing eighty-four prisoners, and his couriers reported such an ugly feeling that he applied to Lincoln for more troops. He said the "deportment of the Faction in this county against government has induced a kind of frenzy." At Hadley, on February 1, seven soldiers were court-martialled for stealing property from private citizens, and were condemned to march before the army on parade with a paper pinned to their breasts, on which was written, in capital letters, " FOR PLUNDERING." Col. Gideon Burt, at Springfield, informed Lincoln on the 1st of February that it would be dangerous to withdraw the horse from the town, as both to the east and west hostility to the government continued. IIe had found that one hundred and twenty armed insurgents were seen at South- wick on the road to Westfield on the last day of March, and he added,
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" It is very difficult for me to obtain men who I can confide in to bring & carry Intelligence & horse who will parole Roads." Colonel Burt was an energetic officer, however, and he inspired a wholesome fear of the militia in these parts, by scouring the country and bring- ing in prisoners. Col. Israel Chapin received at South Hadley ten of Shays's men, captured near Ware river on the 2d of February, and upon reaching Springfield he took a much brighter view of things than Burt did. Chapin had sent his troopers as far north as Amherst and as far east as Palmer, so he reported to Lincoln on February 5. IIe made the expedition with four hundred men. There was much dis- content at Springfield among the soldiers, as the prospect of peace increased their anxiety to return to their neglected families.
The last of February a band of insurgents plundered several houses at Stockbridge, taking several prisoners, and marched for Great Bar- rington, but were soon put to rout by the Lenox and Stockbridge mili- tia after a slight brush, in which two or three on each side were killed. Gen. John Ashley, who was in command, was a descendant of John Pynchon, through his daughter Mary, wife of Joseph Whiting, whose daughter married Col. John Ashley, of Westfield, grandfather of Maj .- Gen. John Ashley. On March 31 sixty of Shays's men at- tacked the house of Colonel Dwight, at Belchertown, and carried off a young man in charge of the family, but did not capture the colonel. The people at Belchertown were in constant communication with Shays at Pelham, and the loyal portion felt themselves much exposed. Rev. Justus Forward, informing Lincoln of the situation there, said that Shays's spies were constantly in the place, and he added dryly, " I am not so anxious for myself as for others ; for I don't think Shays wants a Chaplain ! "
The news of Shays's defeat determined the course of many a waver- ing town. The little town of Granby, for example, had witnessed the passing of armed men in the direction of Springfield, and five days after that town saw the affrighted army of the insurgents sweep back over the mountains, suffering the discomforts and humiliations,
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with none of the glory, of defeat ; a full town-meeting was held, and resolutions passed appealing to General Lincoln to spare his hand and " prevent the awful destruction of Mankind." Almost the moment that the Springfield fight reached Leverett, a petition to Shepard and Lincoln was drawn up to the same effect, lamenting that some by "a misguided Zeal have fermented, and Kindled Coles of strife the flame of which has slain a Number," and hoping for the " interposition of Heaven," and the smile of the " God of Sabbaoth " upon all efforts to restore peace. Shays, at Pelham, was meantime sending petitions for pardon to Lincoln, at Hadley, and to the General Court. What Governor Bowdoin thought is expressed in a letter to Lincoln, dated January 27 : " I am not disappointed in your having applications for the compromision of affairs, by yielding up some part of the Dignity and spirit of Goverment, in exchange for a certain quantity of re- bellion, obstinacy and insolence ; but my dependence on the good people of the commonwealth is so great that I cannot harbour a thought of making such dishonorable barter."
The petition from Pelham to the General Court, dated January 30, and signed by the officers of Worcester, Middlesex, Hampshire, and Berkshire counties, who were in arms, was a meek affair. It " humbly sheweth that your Petitionners being senciable that we have been in error in having recourse to arms, and not seeking redress in a consti- tutional way " etc.
The inhabitants of Colrain also appealed to Lincoln for " clemency, - a most darling attribute when connected with Power and Legal authority," in order to prevent the "cutting off the members of the natural body." The selectmen of Williamstown sent resolutions to both contending parties recognizing at once the " Necessity and im- portance of supporting the government" and the "equal impor- tance " of paying attention to the "Redress of all Grievances of the People." The town of Conway, in its appeal to Lincoln, drew a lurid picture of civil war in western Massachusetts, throwing society "into a State Little short of that where the offenders against the
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Majesty of Heaven are Doomed to suffer according to their crimes." General Lincoln is then asked by the town to lift his " eyes up to him who in the Heavens beholding the Follies of meu overlooks their Crimes and bestows his Favours on the most undeserving."
These quotations, as well as others in this chapter, are taken from manuscripts in the possession of General Lincoln's descendants which have never been in print before. The answer to these petitions came from Boston in the shape of a new levy of troops, and there followed a vigorous restoration of order in the stalwart spirit of Governor Bow- doin's proclamation of January 12, in which he asked the question : " Is then the goodly fabrie of freedom which cost us so much blood and treasure so soon to be thrown into ruins? " All insurgents were forced to take the oath of allegiance. Those pardoned were not to hold office or vote for three years ; neither could they legally be em- ployed as schoolmasters or innkeepers. This act of the Legislature provoked a protest from General Lincoln. "In her right hand," said the general, " the government must hold out such terms of mercy in the hour of success with such evident marks of a disposition to for- give as shall apply to the feelings of the delinquents. AI- though I think the proceedings of the Legislature and their conduct will make a rich page in history, yet I cannot but suppose that if the number of the disfranchised had been less the public peace would have been equally safe and the general happiness promoted. The act includes so great a description of persons that in its operation many towns will be disfranchised."
The sullen feeling in this part of the State survived for a time. Indeed it was at one time considered doubtful whether Massachusetts would cast her lot with the constitution framed by the convention that met in the following May at Philadelphia and presided over by George Washington. The sentiment in Hampshire county was about evenly divided. The vote in the convention was one hundred and eighty-seven yeas to one hundred and sixty-eight nays.
It was in the nineties when General Shepard complained that he had
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not been repaid by the State for his services in defending Springfield, and he added : " As to private injuries and insults which I have re- ceived, some have been by the burning of my fences and injuring my woodlands by fire beyond recovery for many years ; by most wantonly as well as cruelly destroying two of my horses by cutting off their ears and digging out their eyes before they were killed ; by personally insulting me with the vile epithet of 'a murderer of brethren,' and through anonymous letters threatening me with the destruction of my dwelling-house and family by fire."
But the time did finally come when men learned to have enough faith in their personal convictions to be content to promulgate their views unattended by coercive weapons. Then it was that the ancient lampoon became history : -
" Politicians of all kinds Who are not yet decided, May see how Yankees speak their minds And yet are not divided."
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