What Did Shays Have to Sell to Feed His Family?

People

Daniel Shays

1747-1825

Daniel Shays
© 2008 Bryant White

Prologue

Daniel Shays' parents emigrated from Ireland to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1730s. Patrick and Margaret (Dempsey) Shays married in 1744 and ready housekeeping in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. In 1747, Margaret gave birth to Daniel, the second of what would be a family of six children. (1)

Little is known of Daniel's early life, only a few fragments of surviving information are suggestive in lite of his later on career and reputation. We know that, in common with other young men without land of their own, Daniel Shays hired himself out to work. According to a contemporary, by the early 1770s, Shays was living on a farm in Brookfield, where he was paid to a higher place the going rate for a laborer in recognition of his operation every bit a "smart, active" man. The same resident recalled that the young Daniel Shays "had much taste for the war machine." When young men assembled for militia preparation days, some armed only with wooden guns and swords, Shays enthusiastically drilled them. (2)

Hard worker or not, men similar Daniel Shays without a trade or land to farm, by and large delayed wedlock until their mid-twenties. At the age of 25, Daniel Shays appeared in the town records in 1772 with Abigail Gilbert when the couple published their intention to wed. Their first kid, Daniel junior, was built-in in 1773. Other children followed, including two daughters. It is not known how many children were born to Daniel and Abigail, although an elderly Daniel Shays would refer to the difficulty of maintaining a "large and Expensive family." (3)

Every bit war with England seemed e'er more than likely, the old militia exercises causeless a more serious graphic symbol. Daniel seems never to have faltered in his commitment to the American Whig, or Patriot, cause. He did non remain a member of the Brookfield militia, still. At some indicate between 1774 and 1775, Daniel and Abigail moved west to Shutesbury, where Shays joined militia from Shutesbury, Amherst and Leverett. His experience in drilling may explain why he appeared on the company scroll as Sergeant Daniel Shays. When Helm Reuben Dickinson's company marched to Cambridge in 1775 following the fighting at Lexington and Concord, Shays received eighteen shillings, 10 pence for 11 days of service. (4)

An Officer and a Gentleman

Sergeant Shays soon became Lieutenant Shays. He fought at Bunker Hill and at Ticonderoga. By 1777, Shays had leveraged his power to heighten men willing to serve under him into a Helm's committee in the Fifth Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army. His committee was not official until 1779, but it was backdated to Jan, 1777. In the meantime, Helm Shays connected to build his reputation as a courageous and competent officeholder, including fighting Burgoyne'southward invading ground forces at Saratoga, New York, and participating in the desperate action at Stony Indicate, New York. General Lafayette himself honored Captain Shays forth with other officers under his command with a ceremonial sword as a marker of his personal esteem. (5)

Though he came from a poor background, Shays tried hard to maintain the demeanor and appoint in the activities expected of a commissioned officeholder. Like many of his fellow officers, he was a Bricklayer, having joined a lodge in New York in 1778 during his service there. (6) In common with many Continental Ground forces officers, Shays struggled to make ends see. With his pay in abiding arrears and no sign of relief in sight, Captain Shays decided to office with the sword Full general Lafayette had bestowed on him. Shays' decision to sell the sword unleashed a firestorm of criticism from his boyfriend officers and contributed to his decision to resign his commission in 1780. (seven)

By the end of the war, Daniel Shays was living in Pelham with Abigail, where his war machine rank and distinguished service earned him the respect of his fellow residents. Populated primarily by poor Scots-Irish gaelic residents, the rocky soil and hills of Pelham made farming difficult. Almost farmed fewer than 25 improved, or cleared, acres. The boondocks probably attracted Daniel Shays for that very reason. Rocky acres in Pelham were more than affordable than the rich bottom lands in Connecticut River Valley towns like Northampton and Hadley. The Shays family at one point owned equally much every bit 251 acres, only financial difficulties in the astringent post-war recession forced Daniel to sell over one-half his land. By 1785, Shays was having difficulty meeting his obligations. He would be sued at to the lowest degree twice for unpaid debts in 1786. (8)

Daniel Shays' domicile in Pelham. The house was destroyed and the surrounding lands flooded during the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930s. More info
Courtesy Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield, MA

Captain Shays was non the simply Massachusetts resident suffering financial hardship during the recession that had followed a brief mail service-war boom. The adamant attempt by the Massachusetts Legislature to pay off the state'due south war debt through an aggressive taxation policy despite the hard times proved disastrous. The government's insistence that people pay their taxes in hard money rather than in goods or newspaper currency fabricated a bad situation worse. The petty gilt and silver in circulation was not in the hands of farmers, whose avails were tied up in land, livestock and produce. Pelham joined dozens of towns across the Commonwealth in petitioning for debtor relief, and for laws lowering judicial court fees and government salaries. (9)

Daniel Shays and other Pelham residents met hither to discuss grievances and petition the Massachusetts Full general Court. The Pelham Town Hall is the oldest town hall in continuous use in the United States. More info
ourtesy Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield, MA

The regime chose not to enact the debtor relief and reforms for which the petitioners pleaded. Instead, the General Court urged Massachusetts citizens to exercise patience and frugality. (ten) When the government proved unresponsive to the blizzard of town petitions and resolutions from county conventions, thousands of men marched on the Massachusetts courts. Equally in the years leading up to the Revolution, armed men prevented courts from convening or conducting whatsoever business. They called themselves Regulators and insisted they were at that place to uphold justice.

It was at this signal that Daniel Shays emerged as one of the local leaders of the protest move. Shays met with other local men at Conkey's Tavern in Pelham, where they discussed their state of affairs and what could be done in the face of the authorities's lack of interest in constitutional reforms or debtor relief policies.

Conkey's Tavern in Pelham was a popular gathering place for Daniel Shays and other local Regulators. More info
ourtesy Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Clan, Deerfield, MA

A Reluctant Leader

Shays was, past all accounts, a reluctant leader. He had refused to atomic number 82 the Pelham contingent when the Regulators marched on the Northampton Court of Common Pleas in Baronial, 1786. Nevertheless, the following calendar month, he played a prominent role in an even more unsafe protest. Everyone expected that the judges of the Supreme Judicial Courtroom session scheduled to sit at Springfield in September would result indictments against Captain Luke Day of West Springfield and other men who had led the Regulators against the Northampton court. Helm Shays agreed to present the demands of the Regulators that the Springfield court non upshot any indictments or sit again until the grievances of the people had been addressed. Tensions ran high, but Shays believed he could keep the situation from getting out of hand by bold leadership over the aroused and potentially violent grouping of protesters, many of whom had made a point of coming armed with muskets and clubs. (11)

Captain Shays cut an impressive effigy in his Continental Army uniform. His dignified air of control and his confident noesis of military protocols lent acceptance and respectability to the ranks marching on the courthouse. He rode forward to confer with Full general William Shepard, commander of the militia troops stationed in front of the court business firm. The two quondam Continental Army officers negotiated the peaceable abandonment of the courthouse by the judges and the militia. In return, Shays agreed that the Regulator troops would confine themselves to peaceably marching and demonstrating in front of the building rather than seeking to close it by forcefulness. (12)

Helm Daniel Shays presented the demands of the Regulators and negotiated the peaceful abandonment of the courthouse with the commander of the authorities militia Full general William Shepard. Particular from Petition and Protest
© 2008 Bryant White

Shays' appearance at the head of the Regulators at Springfield marked a turning point for him personally and for the Regulator movement in general. For the first time, the Regulators had airtight not only the lower Court of Mutual Pleas, simply a session of the Supreme Judicial Court. The Massachusetts Full general Court interpreted the endmost of the Commonwealth's highest court equally a direct assault on the sovereignty of the state government. Well-nigh overnight, Shays rose to the meridian of the government's almost wanted list and was labeled the "generalissimo" of the movement the Friends of Government were calling a rebellion. Although Shays did not know it, the momentum had begun to build that would result in his proper name condign synonymous with the Regulation. (13)

This 1787 woodcut depicts the two men the authorities believed were the leaders of the Regulator movement: Daniel Shays of Pelham and Job Shattuck of Groton. More info
Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Equally for Shays himself, the Springfield court closing offered an opportunity to notice the strengths and the weaknesses of the Regulator move. The men he led were eager to protect the rights for which many of them had fought in the recent war. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, Shays saw that many of the men were unarmed and poorly equipped. Different General Shepard'south authorities militia, the Regulators had not had access to the weapons and stores of the United states Arsenal at Springfield. The regime militia had even commandeered a cannon from the Armory and placed it in forepart of the courthouse. Although his men scoffed at the cannon they chosen the "government's puppy," Shays knew that the lack of weapons would prove a serious weakness in any armed confrontation with the authorities militia. (14)

The militia and the Regulators agreed to "go home friendly" following the endmost of the Springfield Supreme Judicial Court, but ugly confrontations at courthouses beyond the land continued throughout the fall and winter. (15) The authorities decided to take control of the situation by capturing Job Shattuck of Groton, a prominent local homo believed to be a ringleader and primary instigator of the armed protests. When a group of mounted militia from Boston cornered and seriously wounded Shattuck, Shays and other Regulators had had plenty. Rumors of atrocities inflicted past the troops on innocent bystanders, including women and children, alarmed and inflamed the Regulators. By Dec, Shays and a committee of 17 were writing circulating messages to towns "in the nowadays movement of the people" throughout Hampshire County, urging them to heighten militia companies to encounter regimental quotas to stand up confronting the authorities. (16)

The land legislature was not idle; it threatened alarming consequences for Regulators, while at the same fourth dimension offer pardons to any who took an oath of allegiance and laid downwards their arms. Individual subscribers came forrad to fund the raising of an emergency state militia "for the purpose of quelling the Tumults & securing the Rights of the Citizens." (17)

An Unwilling "accessary to the shedding of blood"

Shays was in a difficult situation. He saw himself equally a mediator; he had worked hard to proceed the confrontation at the September court closing from escalating into violence. Yet, it was condign ever clearer that the regime considered him 1 of the leaders and an incorrigible rebel. His options for a peaceful mediation that involved a pardon for himself were rapidly diminishing. In a letter to Governor Bowdoin, General Rufus Putnam reported that Shays emphatically denied whatsoever leadership office in the Regulation. According to Putnam, Shays described his role in Springfield in September as that of a peacemaker determined to avert bloodshed, and claimed that he had only reluctantly gone along with subsequent courtroom closings. When Putnam asked him, "had you lot an opportunity would you accept of a pardon and take those people to themselves?" Shays replied, "Yes—in a moment." (xviii)

Thrust into a part he had non sought, Shays connected to work for a peaceful resolution. In a January communication to Full general Shepard, Shays insisted that he was "unwilling to be any fashion accessary to the shedding of blood, and greatly desirous of restoring peace and harmony to this convulsed Commonwealth." At the same time, he tried to strengthen the negotiating position of the Regulators by improving their state of affairs. The men were poorly armed and equipped; Shays knew at that place were arms and supplies at the Springfield Arsenal. The Armory barracks also offered welcome shelter from the bitter winter weather. Shays and the other local Regulator leaders agreed that they would rendezvous and march on the Arsenal on Jan 25. Captain Luke Day of West Springfield would bring a regiment, Captain Eli Parsons would bring men downward from Chicopee, and Daniel Shays himself would come up with a regiment west from Palmer, through Ludlow and Wilbraham. All three groups together numbered about 1,800 men. (19)

Unfortunately for Shays, the government militia was already occupying the United States Arsenal. Full general Shepard had worried for months almost the vulnerable state of affairs of the Armory. He lacked authorization to commandeer the arsenal stores since they were the belongings not of the country of Massachusetts, but of the U.s.a. authorities. Shepard feared that, should the Regulators obtain the Armory stores, they would be better armed than the government militia he commanded, or the army making its fashion w from Boston under Full general Benjamin Lincoln. He decided upon the risky course of occupying the Arsenal grounds and commandeering its stores. The Regulators would have to have the Armory by force if they could not convince Shepard and his militia to peaceably carelessness it as they had the courthouse four months earlier. (20)

For reasons that remain unclear, Captain Day chose not to cross the Connecticut River to bring together Captains Parsons and Shays in their advance. Instead, he stayed where he was, and issued an ultimatum demanding that Full general Shepard's men relinquish their weapons and abandon the Arsenal. (21)

Day's message that he did not expect to come to action on Jan 25th was intercepted before it reached Shays. Equally the column of about 1,200–ane,400 Regulators under Shays and Parsons approached, Shepard sent officers to meet with Shays and warn him away from the Arsenal. Shays responded past expressing his determination to take the Arsenal stores and barracks. Despite warnings that he would meet deadly force if he insisted on advancing, Shays ordered the column to continue, and rode to the rear to bring upward the balance of the men with more speed.

It is non clear whether Shays or his men believed the government militia defending the Armory would in fact burn on them. Men from Colrain and Greenfield manned the Arsenal artillery. Would they shoot at members of their own and neighboring communities? What is articulate is that the Regulators disregarded warning shots fired over their heads and connected to advance through the snowfall in columns, viii abreast. When Shepard ordered the arms to open burn down in earnest, the eye of the Regulator cavalcade dissolved into chaos, and the veterans in the advance had no pick only to flee themselves. (22)

The Regulator advance turned into a retreat equally round after round of arms slammed into the center of the advancing Regulator cavalcade. Detail from Bloody Meet - Regulators
© 2008 Bryant White

Any Shays had expected, he was not prepared for the pell-mell retreat of the entire column. Many men fled to their homes or went into hiding. Those who re-formed into a coherent group raced for the relative prophylactic of Chicopee, where Shays sent a message to Shepard asking that he be immune to retrieve his expressionless and wounded under a flag of truce. So it was on to S Hadley, and from there a weary, common cold march to Pelham where what was left of the Regulator column encamped. (23)

Letters and communications went back and along from Captain Shays to Full general Benjamin Lincoln, who had arrived in Springfield ii days after the Arsenal activeness. Losing no time, Lincoln crossed the frozen Connecticut in a combined action with Shepard'due south militia and routed Captain 24-hour interval'southward regiment. At present he was preparing to pursue Shays and the men remaining under his command. Shays and his officers insisted that their crusade was merely, and that pardons for officers likewise every bit regular men-at-artillery would help defuse the situation. Instead of promising pardons, Lincoln planned his pursuit. When he received news that the Regulators had slipped away from Pelham, Lincoln provisioned his men for three days and sent them on a 30-mile march from their campsite at Hadley to intercept and assault the Regulators at Petersham. Lincoln did not know that he was sending his men into a fell nor'easter that began in the middle of the nighttime. When the accelerate staggered into Petersham on the morn of February iii, they caught their quarry by complete surprise. This last reversal demoralized the remaining Regulators; Shays sent out the word that it was every man for himself, and with his officers, slipped over the edge into New Hampshire. (24)

Unsafe and Tedious Ordeal

Now began a long, unsafe and deadening ordeal for Daniel Shays. Through the wintertime and spring of 1787, Shays would accept heard news of the men who had been captured, arrested and condemned to death. Fearful of capture and knowing he had been indicted on charges of high treason, he moved from place to identify, never staying longer than one or ii days in one location. From New Hampshire, he went to Vermont. Abigail joined him there, where she, likewise, lived a life on the run, afraid to confide in anyone lest her husband exist recognized and arrested. (25)

Hope must accept stirred in Daniel Shays as he learned that virtually all of the Regulators, including those the government had identified as leaders and sentenced to death, had been pardoned and released. The newly-elected John Hancock signaled a more lenient and beneficial administration. The Massachusetts government and people alike seemed eager to put the turmoil of the previous year behind them. Attention at present focused not on the Regulators, but on the debates over the proposed Constitution created at Philadelphia in the summertime of 1787.

The unrest in Massachusetts added urgency to the mission of the Philadelphia Convention, where delegates from 12 states gathered "to ensure domestic tranquility." Detail from Making a Nation
© 2008 Bryant White

A similar want for stability, conciliation and consensus characterized the Massachusetts ratifying convention, which included a number of erstwhile Regulators and sympathizers. Many of the 168 delegates who voted against the decision to ratify the federal Constitution made a indicate of expressing their willingness to have the conclusion of the Convention. A month after, on March ten, 1788, Daniel Shays and Eli Parsons petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature for clemency. In April, Governor John Hancock canceled the rewards withal being offered for their capture. Finally, on June 25, both men received a full pardon. (26)

Epilogue

Daniel Shays returned to Pelham afterward he received his pardon, but he did non remain there long. In an attempt to improve his gloomy economic fortunes, he moved to New York in 1795, and settled in the town of Rensselaerville in Albany County, New York. He so moved to Livingstonville, merely by 1805 he had sold his land and moved on. He eventually settled in Sparta, New York (now Conesus) with a girl and son-in-law. He was a widower at present, although it is not known when or where Abigail Shays died. In 1815, Daniel Shays married Rhoda Havens, an innkeeper and widow. Three years later, at age 77, Shays submitted a petition to Congress under a alimony human action application assistance to indigent veterans who had served in the Continental Regular army during the American Revolution. His petition documented his service tape and declared that "during the whole Time of his Service, he conducted with Fidelity, and Reputation and attended to his Duty with the greatest Caution and Dilligence." Citing a severe wound he received in 1775 that had made him permanently "unable to labour," and a "big and Expensive Family unit dependent on his Intendance and Support," he asked Congress for either the five years officer'due south pay he had never received, or to be placed on the alimony list. The regime granted his petition for a pension, and Shays used it to purchase 12 acres of land where he built a house and barn. Daniel Shays died in obscurity in Sparta on September 23, 1825, at the historic period of 78.

Daniel Shays filed this request for a Continental Army pension in 1818. More info
Courtesy, Forbes Library, Special Collections, Northampton, MA

Scant biographical information and his ain self-professed ambivalence accept combined to create a complex legacy for Daniel Shays. In 19th century histories jubilant the creation of the Constitution, Shays was cast equally the "misguided" leader of a "hapless rebellion against potency." A monument erected in 1927 in Petersham followed suit, celebrating the rout of Daniel Shays and his followers, who were "in rebellion against the Commonwealth" and sternly concluding that "Obedience to Law is True Liberty."

Among some Americans, yet, Daniel Shays was becoming something of a folk hero. A inkling into this rehabilitated image of Shays and the motion that bears his proper name appeared in Leslies' Weekly Illustrated Paper in 1900 with the merits that "The first of America'southward Populists was Daniel Shays." It is no surprise that in an era in which farming and urban interests seemed irreconcilably opposed, that populists cast Daniel Shays as an agrestal hero who sought to reform a system hostile to struggling farmers. (27)

Daniel Shays continued to attract renewed interest and admiration into the 20th century. In 1931 Walter Dyer wrote Sprigs of Hemlock , which Arthur Chiliad. Schlesinger, Jr., reviewed approvingly in the New England Quarterly as "a very readable book for boys" that drew a "very different picture show of Daniel Shays from that which is usually given past historians." Similarly, James and Christopher Collier's 1978 novel The Wintertime Hero offered younger readers a more than nuanced, sympathetic reading of Daniel Shays and his beau Regulators. (28)

A new monument erected in Petersham in 1987, offered what is condign a more popular interpretation of Daniel Shays and the Regulators:

In this town on Sunday morning, February fourth, 1787, CAPTAIN DANIEL SHAYS and 150 of his followers who fought for the common people against the established powers and who tried to brand real the vision of justice and equality embodied in our revolutionary annunciation of independence, was surprised and routed, while enjoying the hospitality of Petersham, by Full general Benjamin Lincoln and an ground forces financed by the wealthy merchants of Boston.

True Liberty and Justice may require resistance to police.

Daniel Shays has been memorialized locally in a variety of ways. In Pelham there is a monument to the Regulators and their crusade. Nearby Amherst has "Shays Street" and the Horse Caves, an overhanging ledge under which, according to local legend, Daniel Shays hid during the Regulation. (29) Route 202, part of which runs through Pelham and nearby towns, is "Daniel Shays Highway." There is a Boston-based stone band chosen "Shays' Rebellion," and an internet provider for Western Massachusetts known as "Shaysnet." The Northampton Brewery in Northampton, MA, sells "Daniel Shays' Best Bitter."

It remains to be seen how hereafter Americans will view Daniel Shays and the movement that, accurately or non, bears his proper name. What does seem clear is that notwithstanding niggling we know of him personally, Daniel Shays will continue to excite the involvement of those who admire, and those who disagree with, the choices he fabricated.

The Ballad of Daniel Shays

My name is Shays, in former days,
In Pelham I did dwell, sir,
But now I'm forced to get out that place,
Because I did rebel, sir.

Within the state, I lived of tardily,
By Satan's foul invention.
In Pluto's cause, against the laws
I raised an insurrection.

'Twas planned below, by that curvation foe,
All laws should fall earlier me;
Though in disgrace, the populace
Did, Persian like, adore me.

On mounted steed I did proceed
The Federal stores to plunder;
But there I met with a assuming salute,
From Shepard'southward warlike thunder.

he kindly sent his aid-de-campsite
To warn me of my treason;
But when I did his favors scorn,
He sent his weighty reason,

Then Shays returned to Vermont state,
Chagrined and much aback, sir;
And soon the mighty rebel host,
Unto the laws were tamed, sir.

Oh, then our honored fathers sat,
With a assuming resolution,
And framed a programme and sent to us
Of noble constitution.

America, let us rejoice
In our new constitution.
And never more pretend to call back
Of another revolution. (30)

---

About This Narrative

Note: All narratives about people are, to the extent possible, based on principal and secondary historical sources.

Meet Further Reading for a listing of sources used in creating this narrative. For a discussion of issues related to telling people's stories on the site, meet: Bringing History to Life: The People of Shays' Rebellion

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