they found safety under the jurisdiction of neighboring States. The rebellion was over. The rebellion was over, but rapine took its place. From the security of neighboring States bands of men stole in, ready for anything which promised revenge or plunder. Petty larceny, burglary, arson, varied the life of the devoted citizens of Berkshire and Hampshire. The account of a score or more of acts of open or secret violence has been preserved. In the month of February five or six men entered the house of Nehemiah Kellogg of Egremont, knocked him down, half stripped him, insulted his sick mother, while he escaped by leaping from a window and running barefoot in the snow two or three miles to a guard of soldiers. In March, stores and barns in Egremont and Sheffield, belonging to friends of government, were set on fire. In June, a gentleman in Lanesboro woke up to find a band of men armed with muskets in his room, who beat his hired man, fired at his apprentice, robbed his house, and departed, threatening to return and do worse. A writer says: "The human mind grows melancholy, beholding the situation of these counties, so deplorable. Father against son, brother against brother, friend against friend. The whole country is in arms, and there is a cessation of all business." One plundering expedition rises almost to military dignity. A certain Captain Hamlin with one hundred and twenty-two men crossed the New York line. These marauders passed through Stockbridge, pillaging right and left. From one man they took military stores and a relic in the shape of a wampum belt received from a friendly Indian; from a poor seamstress, a pair of silver buckles; from a store, liquors. Still advancing, bearing with them no little booty and some prisoners, they came to Great Barrington, where similar scenes were enacted. At Great Barrington they required the jailer's wife to show them the jail, jokingly saying that they wished to see if it was strong enough to hold their prisoners. As the good lady, who seems to have been of the Revolutionary type, carried them from cell to cell, she sung for their edification these appropriate words: "Ye living men, come view the ground This prophecy, in respect to some of them, was fulfilled very shortly, as inside of five hours they were tenants of the cells which they had so jocosely examined; for a hundred militia from Great Barrington and Sheffield collected under Colonel John Ashley, pursued the now retreating robbers, and overtook them in Egremont, within three miles of the New York line. A sharp skirmish ensued. Two of the militia fell. Four of the invaders were killed, thirty including their captain were wounded, and fifty captured, and the band broken up. Colonel John Ashley had that mingled persuasion and vigor which are at the root of all discipline, as the following anecdote shows. During the Shays Rebellion he was in command of a company, whose term of enlistment had expired. He called a parade, represented as eloquently as he could the need the State had of their services, and added that he did. not want any cowards with him, and that he was going to see who were brave and who were cowards. He would give the word, "Shoulder arms!" "Then let every brave man bring his musket to his shoulder, and let every coward slink back out of the ranks." Pausing a moment to see the effect of his eloquence, he drew his sword and added, with a strong oath, "But remem ber that I'll run the first man through the body who leaves the ranks. Attention, fellow soldiers, shoulder arms!" Up went every musket, and there was not a break in the ranks. How equitable this was moralists must decide, but that it was thoroughly Jacksonian every careful reader of the campaign at New Orleans must admit. It was at this skirmish probably that he gave the order which tradition preserves; when, having entreated his misguided opponents to return to their allegiance, and they had interpreted his leniency to be a symptom of fear, he called out, "Pour in your fire, my boys, and God have mercy on their souls! Six By September, 1787, arrangements had been entered into with the neighboring States to repress marauders. Pillage had ceased. The military were withdrawn. After a year of as nearly utter anarchy as a civilized State can experience, Western Massachusetts rested. The greatest forbearance was exercised towards the offenders. All the rank and file, upon taking the oath of allegiance, were received back to citizenship. or seven of the leaders were sentenced to be hung, but after a few months' probation they too were pardoned. That this leniency was wise as well as merciful is clear. For almost at once these men, who had threatened the stability of government, sensible of their errors, settled down into orderly and industrious members of society, and nothing remained of the Shays Rebellion but its memory and its lessons. Of some things you cannot speak bitterly. The folly of the insurgents is palpable; their sin against the social state not less so. But folly and sin alike so had their root in the debt, in the misery, and in the disappointed hopes of overburdened men, that good people condemned with a strong sense of compassion, and gladly tempered justice with mercy. One result may be fairly traced to these troubles; and that was the increasing desire for a stronger central government, which contributed to the acceptance of the Constitution of the United States. Said the Hon. Jonathan Smith of Lanesboro in the Massachusetts Convention for the ratification of the Constitution: "I have lived in a part of the country where I have known the worth of good government by the want of it. I am going to show you, my fellow farmers, what were the effects of anarchy. People took up arms, and then, if you went to speak to them, you had the musket of death presented to your breast. They would rob you of your property, threaten to burn your homes, oblige you to be on your guard night and day. Alarms spread from town to town. Families were broken up. The tender mother would cry, 'O, my son is among them! Our distress was so great, that we should have been glad to snatch at anything that looked like a government for protection. Had any person that was able to protect us set up a standard, we should have all flocked to him, even if he had been a monarch. Now, Mr. President, when I saw this Constitution, I found that it was a cure for these disorders. It was just the thing we wanted." Multitudes thought the same. And so, rejoicing in this great nationality which sectional jealousy and civil war have not been able to destroy, we can believe that to found it and to consolidate it was required, not only the bold prescience of Samuel Adams, and the wisdom of Franklin, Jefferson, and the rest, and the valor of Washington, Greene, and so many more, but, under God, the folly also of those who projected and the rashness of those who carried on the Shays Rebellion. MY MEMORIES OF CONCORD IN THE GREAT MEM CIVIL WAR. MARCH 17, 1886. EMBERS of the Old Concord Post of the Grand You well know that it was with unfeigned reluctance that I consented to address you,- that I, who had been a partaker neither in your perils nor your glory, — that I, who had only observed while you achieved, and sympathized when you suffered, that I should undertake to say anything to you of that great controversy in which you were actors, seemed presumptuous indeed. I see that I was mistaken. You only ask me to speak of my memories of Concord in the Great Civil War. Other men will tell of experiences on the tented field. Other tongues will depict the courage. and endurance, the sadness and the brightness, the many failures and the final successes, which make up the immortal story. My part is a humbler one; -to recall the thoughts and feelings which filled all minds and hearts in one quiet New England town; to report with what varied emotions we sent our brothers out in an ever lengthening procession; to remember with what mingled anguish and exultation we received back our dead who had found it sweet to die for country; to narrate how our women prayed and worked, and worked and prayed again, if so be they might bring one added comfort to tent or hut on bleak hillside, or soften one |