Miracles and Massacres Read Online Free PDF Page A

in,” Judge Eleazar Porter demanded. Derisive laughter rang through the crowd. “You might care to rethink that request, your honor,” snapped Captain Luke Day. “It looks like the people have a different idea about who’s meeting where and when from now on.” Day liked talking as much as he liked soldiering.
    The three judges nervously conferred. After agreeing that there was no way they could force their way through this jostling, threatening mob, they retreated to a nearby inn. No cases would be heard today and no debtors or tax delinquents arraigned. Soon these judges would mount their steeds and make the wisest decision possible—to ride out of town.
    It wasn’t until midnight that the mobbers finally departed from Northampton’s courthouse. They were tired but emboldened, and their actions had ignited a spark that would lead to an explosion in Pelham and, eventually, in all of western Massachusetts.
    Daniel Shays’ Farmhouse
    Pelham, Massachusetts
    August 30, 1786
    If Daniel Shays was concerned about changing his reputation, he had a funny way of doing it. The previous morning his neighbors had asked him to lead them on their march to Northampton. He refused. Fifty-year-old Deacon John Thompson took command in his place.
    But, now, after a night of rest and some deep thinking, Shays was having second—and third—thoughts. Who was better suited to lead his aggrieved neighbors than he, a man as burdened by debt and Boston oppression as anyone, a patriot who had never even been paid for his wartime service?
    The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had been a fool to turn down his neighbor’s request. Daniel Shays resolved to step forward and lead.
    Supreme Judicial Court
    Hampden County Courthouse
    Springfield, Massachusetts
    September 26, 1786
    The virus spread, hopscotching from town to town and county to county.
    An epidemic had begun.
    Three hundred men shut down the state’s Supreme Judicial Court when it tried to meet at Worcester. A drunken horde—men too poor to pay their debts, but not to buy rum—pulled the same trick when Middlesex County’s court convened at Concord. Mob rule struck again at Great Barrington in the Berkshires and at Taunton, south of Boston, near the Rhode Island border. Soon the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court would indict eleven protest leaders for rioting and sedition.
    Today, that court was due to convene in Springfield and, with a thousand protesters, or “Regulators,” as they now called themselves, surrounding the courthouse, it looked like the pattern might repeat itself yet again.
    â€œA fine morning for a court closing,” joked Captain Luke Day to the ex-officer standing beside him.
    â€œIndeed,” answered Daniel Shays.
    Day eyed Supreme Court justice William Cushing attempting to wade through the mob and called out to him: “No trying of debtors today! The road back to Boston lies yonder! I would advise you to take it, sir! Now!”
    From around the corner another column of men approached.
    Ah, reinforcements , thought Shays.
    He could not have been more wrong.
    The men now marching toward him were responding to a far different kind of call: that of the rule of law. They formed uneven ranks in the sun-drenched courthouse square, but they snapped to a quick and soldierly attention on a sudden call of “Halt!” from Major General William Shepard, the pudgy, fifty-year-old commander of the Massachusetts state militia. “Cannon!” he barked, and a brace of cannons quickly rolled into place. Crews scurried to put them in working order—their barrels aimed squarely at Luke Day’s poorly armed Regulators.
    With the reinforcements in place, Chief Justice Cushing and his fellow judges gingerly entered the courthouse. Their victory, however, proved hollow. No business was conducted that day as not even one juror had dared run Luke Day’s gauntlet to