Glenn Beck - Miracles and Massacres - True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

“Let me be clear, then: we are taking the arsenal and public buildings in Springfield.” Shays’ bravado was overflowing, but his swagger suddenly abated. “Will they fight?” he asked, his eyes narrowing with concern.

“You can count on it,” said Buffington.

“That’s all I want,” Shays lied, as he wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck. Despite his restored bluster, he wondered whether a woolen scarf might not be the only thing wrapped round his neck in the near future.

Buffington thought the same thing. “If you advance,” he warned Shays, “you will meet those men we are both accustomed to obey.”

Buffington rode away, hoping for the best, but more fearful than ever that the worst was yet to come.

Continental Arsenal

Springfield, Massachusetts

January 25, 1787

William Shepard paced nervously, awaiting Buffington’s return. Would he bear news of Shays’ capitulation? No, that was too much to hope for. These mobbers would have to be brought to reason not by cool words but with hot lead.

A militia member approached Shepard with a piece of paper. “General, a message . . . from Captain Day.”

Shepard slowly removed his kidskin gloves and unfolded the document handed him. “Headquarters,” it began, “West Springfield, January 25, 1787.”

“Headquarters!” Shepard snorted, “You would think that loudmouth brigand would at least see combat before assuming such airs. I know damned well where his ‘Headquarters’ is—it’s the ‘Stebbins Tavern,’ a place better suited to commanding bottles than battles.”

Shepard read on:

The body of the people assembled in arms, adhering to the first principles in nature, self-preservation, do, in the most peremptory manner, demand:

1. That the troops in Springfield lay down their arms.

2. That their arms be deposited in the public stores, under the care of the proper officers, to be returned to the owners at the termination of the present contest.

3. That the troops return to their homes upon parole.

Your Excellency’s most obedient, humble servant,

Luke Day.

Captain Commandant of this division.

Shepard sighed. This game would be funny if it were not so deadly: neighbors firing on neighbors, a state torn asunder, and a braggart in a tavern issuing orders to a lawfully elected government.

We’ll see soon enough , Shepard thought, just who tenders parole to whom .

• • •

“Company’s right on time,” William Shepard muttered. “Very polite of them.”

He watched a small parade of men struggling through massive snowdrifts on the Boston Road growing larger and larger still.

“Captain Buffington, Colonel Lyman, will you do the honors? Ask them what they want—for posterity’s record.”

“My pleasure, General,” said Lyman. Both Lyman and Buffington quickly ascended their mounts to meet Shays’ advancing Regulator forces. If Shepard’s militia could not yet see “the whites” of the mobbers’ eyes from the arsenal, they could easily see their steamy breath.

Buffington posed Shepard’s question to Shays, who promptly answered, “Barracks and stores.”

The Regulators pushed forward and were just about a hundred yards from the arsenal’s heavily guarded perimeter when Colonel Lyman warned, “Advance no further or you will be fired upon.”

“That’s all we want, by God!” jeered Captain Adam Wheeler, a French and Indian War veteran who stood stoutly at Shays’ side. Lyman nodded to Buffington, and the two galloped as fast as they could back to their lines.

“Take the hill on which the arsenal and the Public Buildings stand!” Shays shouted to his troops, who responded with a great roar. If noise and enthusiasm could seize the arsenal, it would soon be theirs.

While Shays was marching his men up the Boston Road on one side of the arsenal, Eli Parsons’ Berkshire County lads were attacking on another and Luke Day was bringing his men to bear from a third side. They hoped that their enormous show of force would force Shepard to fold.

But something or rather someone was missing.

Where was Day?

Shays pondered the problem as his men inched perilously closer to Shepard’s muskets.

• • •

William Shepard’s prized possession on this late January afternoon was not either of his cannons—“government puppies,” his men called them—but a piece of paper hidden within his red-trimmed blue greatcoat. It was the letter commandeered the day before from a drunken messenger at Parsons’ Tavern, a critical communication from Luke Day to Daniel Shays.

Day had been attempting to respond to Shays to inform him that he would not be available to assault General Shepard and the arsenal at 4:00 P.M. on January 25—this very hour—but that they would instead cordially arrive precisely twenty-four hours later.

And, so, Shepard knew—though he took the precaution of posting some men on Main Street in case Day changed his mind—that he would have to defend only two sides of the arsenal, not three.

Just as important, Daniel Shays did not know that.

“Major Stephens!” roared Shepard, “Fire o’er the rascals’ heads!”

Two fuses burned, and Shepard prayed that such a warning might bring his opponents to their senses. Not merely for their sake, but for his as well. He had no way of really knowing how his own men might react to drawing the blood of their neighbors and fellow countrymen. His own army, he fretted, might dissolve at the first shot.

BOOM! . . . BOOM!

A great, deafening roar rose from the arsenal as two cannonballs sailed safely over the heads of Shays’ advancing hordes.

Or had they sailed safely? Most of Shays’ army lay prone, facefirst, on the snowy ground, as if they were a field of harvested wheat.

One by one, Shays’ army arose and dusted themselves off. “March on! March on!” Shays barked.

“Major Stephens,” Shepard ordered, his words catching in his throat as he uttered them, “Another volley—this time waist height .”

BOOM! . . . BOOM! The cannons crashed again.

Stephens’ cannon shot found its target, ripping through Shays’ ranks, tearing through blood, sinew, and bone like a sword through a sack of flour.

Three men—Ezekiel Root and Ariel Webster, both of Gill, and Jabez Spicer of nearby Leyden—crumpled to the ground dead. A fourth, Shelburne’s John Hunter, was gravely injured. The vast remainder of Shays’ troops, save for a scattered handful frozen in fear, again fell prostrate to the snow-packed ground.

“Again!” cried Shepard, and more metal rocketed through the leaden sky. But above that roar, the men manning the arsenal’s guns heard a scream that shocked them to their very marrow. Artillery Sergeant John Chaloner had moved away too slowly from his cannon’s mouth. Its fearsome blast ripped both of his arms from their sockets and its searing flash blinded him instantly.

The sound of Chaloner’s screams echoed along with the distant rumble from the cannon. The air was thick with gunpowder, and the snow where the ill-fated group of now-dead rebels once stood was red with blood.

Militiamen watched as the Regulators retreated. After they had fallen back to a safe distance, the militiamen inched down to where the army had stood facing them just a few short minutes earlier. They retrieved the mortally wounded John Hunter and what was left of Root, Webster, and Spicer, and moved them to a nearby stable, where the bodies quickly froze solid.

About an hour later, a party of Regulators advanced again, but this time under a white flag.

“Sir, we respectfully request that we may remove the bodies of our five comrades for decent Christian burial.”