by Ron Carter
It was approaching five o’clock before the militia had what horses they could find hitched to twenty-eight cannon and had their infantry around campfires, eating burned sow belly and hardtack.
Eli said quietly, “We better go see what’s happening with Matthew and Caleb.”
To the west, Matthew and Caleb strode past a thousand men, standing bareheaded in their coats, staring wide-eyed at the great glow to the east. The concussion from the first blast had rolled through their camp just seconds ahead of the roar, and they had come from their blankets thinking they were under siege. Then, as they watched in wonderment, another blast turned the eastern sky to day for several seconds, and the concussion and sound of a second explosion thundered through the camp. Struggling to understand what had happened, none paid attention to two men striding toward the command tent.
Caleb at his side, Matthew stopped before Shays.
“Two of the powder magazines at the militia camp just blew. Their horses are scattered. It means they’re getting ready to ambush this camp before morning with cannon and grapeshot.”
“How do you know this?”
“Two of my men did it.”
The man gaped. “Your men did it? Why?”
“To stop as much killing as we could. You can’t fight cannon and grapeshot because you have none of your own. If you have any thought for your men, tell them to scatter. Vermont. New York. Reassemble later in the spring. Save themselves.”
For a time Shays stood in silent thought. “I doubt they’ll do that. They’ve waited too long to end this thing.”
Matthew controlled the flash of anger. “Tell them! The militia will be here before the sun’s an hour high, and they’ll be coming with grapeshot.”
Caleb could remain still no longer. “I was in Springfield with some of these farmers before the fight at the armory. They’re good people. You let them get slaughtered by militia cannon, and you and I might have to discuss it personally.”
Shays came to an instant focus. “Are you threatening me?”
Matthew stood silent, watching.
“No, sir, just stating a fact. You want me to go tell them what’s coming?”
“You stay away from my command.”
“I’ll wait until I hear those militia guns rolling in. Then I’ll do what I can to get these men out of here, back to their families.”
Shays’s voice was ugly. “I’ll have you shot if you do.”
“That depends on whether you can give the order before I fire this Deckhard.”
Shays’s eyes widened as it broke clear in his mind that Caleb meant exactly what he said. He wiped a frosty sleeve across his mouth and for a moment lowered his eyes. “I’ll take care of my command. You two get out of camp.” He walked back into his dark tent and dropped the flap.
Matthew gave a head signal to Caleb, and they walked away, toward the commissary. They took up positions outside the rear of the dark building and watched as the glow in the eastern sky dwindled and the men around them came back to life and started to move. With the predawn gray defining bare branches on trees one hundred yards distant, Matthew nodded to Caleb, and they walked out to the center of the clearing, where Matthew raised his voice.
“Those explosions were two of the powder magazines in the militia camp. Their horses were scattered. By now they’ve recovered, and they’re on their way here with cannon and grapeshot.”
Men slowed and stopped, then began to gather, while Matthew continued to shout.
“I’ll repeat it. Early this morning two of the men with me blew some powder magazines in the militia camp east of here. They also scattered their horses. By now the militia have recovered from it and are coming this way with cannon. They have grapeshot. Their plan is to ambush this camp. We’ve only slowed them down to gain time so you can save yourselves.”
Caleb was watching the faces of those gathered round, estimating their number. There were close to one thousand. Matthew continued.
“Right now it doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong. What matters is that you save yourselves. You can’t fight cannon and grapeshot with only muskets. Take your weapons and your blankets now and scatter. Disappear in the woods. Go home. Get back to your wives and families. Live to fight another day.”
Murmuring began and quickly turned to a rumble, when Caleb saw the crowd opening to his right, and he saw Bouchard barging through the mass toward Matthew. Without a word Caleb turned and walked directly toward the oncoming officer. He met him twenty feet from Matthew, Deckhard still in his left hand. He was five feet from the man before he saw the pistol in Bouchard’s coat belt, and then Bouchard reached for the handle, and he had the weapon nearly drawn when Caleb’s right fist caught him flush on the chin and the man went over backwards, arms flung wide, and he hit the ground on his back and did not move. Without a word Caleb picked up the pistol and trotted back to Matthew’s side. No man spoke nor made a move to interfere as Caleb passed. Matthew glanced at his younger brother as if seeing him for the first time, then turned back to those gathered around.
“Gather your bedrolls. If you’ve got a wagon, hitch up the team and load up with others and get out of sight. Do it. Now!”
A commotion from the east side of the gathering turned all heads, and Matthew stood tall to see Billy and Eli coming in at a trot, weapons held high above their heads. Men moved aside to let them pass and they came on in to stop before Matthew, panting for breath, vapors rising in a cloud. Billy gasped, “They’re coming. Twenty-eight cannon. Maybe three thousand infantry.”
“You got two of the powder magazines?”
“Yes, and scattered the horses. But they’ve recovered. They’re coming. You’ve got about twenty minutes. Thirty at the most.”
Matthew straightened and raised a hand high, shouting. “There’s still time! Disperse! Disperse! Get your belongings and scatter! Go home!”
A few men turned and walked, then trotted away, but it was as though most of them were caught up in a cloud of indecision, unable to make a choice—torn between their anger and the common sense of scattering into the woods. Caleb, Billy, and Eli gathered around Matthew, backs to him, facing the crowd, weapons cocked and ready as Matthew tried one more time.
“Make up your minds!” he shouted. “You have no more time. You’ll be facing cannon and grapeshot! Half of you will be killed or crippled. Get your belongings and go home! Gather another day when you can win! Disperse! Get away from here!”
Matthew stopped and watched, desperate, not knowing what more he could say or do in the minutes that remained. More men began to murmur, then shake their heads and walk away. But the great bulk of them stood where they were, unable to decide, a few beginning to call out, “Get into battle formations and be ready!”
The pounding of two incoming horses brought all heads around to peer east, and all muskets were raised to the ready. Two blowing plow horses came in at a lumbering gait, and those on their backs hauled them to a stop as they slid to the ground running, shouting as they came, “They’re coming! Five minutes behind us! Cannon! Get ready! Get ready!”
Instantly Matthew screamed, “Disperse! Get away from here! Get away!”
For three seconds that seemed an eternity the mob of men stood stock-still before they finally broke, running in all directions. They threw their scanty belongings onto their spread blankets, rolled them hastily, caught them under an arm, abandoned their tents, and with their muskets in the other hand, ran for the woods.
In the clearing, Eli raised a hand to point due east. “There! Five hundred yards!”
Billy and Matthew and Caleb followed his point and saw the movement through the stand of bare trees. Horses coming at a run, pulling big-wheeled cannon carriages, with crews running alongside to keep up. The four men watched the militia catch up to the running farmers and then they were in among them, stopping the horses, turning the cannon, lowering the muzzles. The popping of a few muskets echoed in the forest, and then more, and then came the first b
last of a cannon and then two more and then a rolling volley of cannon fire.
Horrified, sickened, the four men stood still as they watched farmers buckle and go down while the cannon crews reloaded and the big guns bucked and roared again and more men stumbled and fell.
Billy grabbed Matthew. “Get back to the wagon! Those militia don’t know who we are! They’ll turn the cannon on us.”
The four of them turned and with Eli leading, sprinted into the woods and dropped to their haunches long enough to be certain they weren’t followed before they rose and ran on, to their freight wagon, where they dropped to the frozen ground. The firing of the cannon and the rattle of sporadic muskets moved on west until it faded.
After a time, Matthew stood and led the way back to the nearly deserted field of battle, and the four of them walked through the scatter of broken bodies and shattered trees. They looked into the dead faces and the staring eyes of bearded men in ragged clothing, and they said nothing. Billy stopped at the edge of the clearing, and in the frozen silence said, “There’s nothing we can do here.”
They walked back to the wagon and stopped, and Eli spoke to the others.
“I need to go home. Vermont. You go on back to Boston. Tell them what we saw here. What we did. We saved some, on both sides, but the dead died without need. Tell them.”
The others gathered to him and shook his hand and said their farewells, and they watched him walk northwest into the trees, and he was gone.
Billy climbed to the driver’s seat while the others mounted the wagon box. He turned the big horses into the morning sun just clearing the eastern skyline, and the wagon moved across the clearing. For a time they said nothing, and then Caleb spoke.
“Eli was right. It could have been worse. We saved some. Many.”
Billy asked, “Did you get a count?”
Caleb answered. “Twenty-nine farmers. Three militia. Maybe a few more in the running fight away from the clearing.”
Caleb spoke to Matthew. “If the militia had caught them by surprise, it would have been hundreds. Six, eight hundred. You saved some.”
Matthew looked at his brother and nodded once and said nothing.
They pushed steadily east until early afternoon, then stopped to eat cold food while they let the horses graze on what grass they could find in the frozen, patchy snow. After a few more hours they made evening camp, somber, with images of cannon flashes and falling men in their minds.
Morning brought a gray overcast and a rise of twenty degrees in the temperature, and Billy said, “Weather coming,” while they ate fried bacon and potatoes and drank steaming coffee.
Midmorning, traveling in the jolting wagon, they faced an easterly breeze that brought the first flakes of snow. They nooned in falling snow, and before they remounted the wagon, Matthew spoke.
“We saved some of them, but maybe we did more than we think. Maybe this is what is needed to force Congress to do something. They’re going to hold that conference in May, in Philadelphia. If we write all this in a letter—everything—the battle—the insanity of Americans killing Americans—make them feel it and see it the way we did, maybe we can shake them hard enough to quit talking and actually do something.”
Billy took his place in the driver’s seat, and the other two climbed into the wagon box. Before Billy started the horses, Matthew spoke once more.
“There’s one other thing. We’re bringing Billy back home safe and unharmed. I want to be there when we deliver him to Brigitte.”
For a moment Billy did not move. Brigitte! His heart leaped at the remembrance of their precious time before the dying fire in the office and the touch of her as they held each other and she kissed him and he kissed her. He said nothing, but his mind raced as he talked the horses into motion, traveling east, into the lightly falling snow, toward Boston, and home, and Brigitte.
Behind him, jolting in the wagon box, Matthew sat with his knees drawn up, head bowed, eyes closed, vapor rising in the freezing air as his thoughts ran heavy.
Thirty-two men dead—frozen in the snow back in that clearing—thirty-two good men who fought side by side for six bitter years to be free from the British—and now they’re dead because we’re killing each other! For a moment he raised his head and peered over the tailgate as though by the looking he could somehow see beyond the miles back to the clearing to where the frozen bodies lay, dark and still and twisted in the white snow.
Is that what we fought for?—to kill each other? What happened to the dream? The dream of freedom?
He grasped the top of the wagon box and set his jaw, and a light came into his eyes.
It is right! The dream is right! It carried us through the worst that a king could do to us, and it can carry us until we learn! Free men can govern themselves—change the world! They can! The last great challenge is the learning. We must hold to the dream until we learn!
Notes
The three battles between Shays’s followers and the Massachusetts Militia commanded by General Benjamin Lincoln occurred on January 25, 1787, at the Springfield armory, then on February 4 at Petersham, and finally at Sheffield on February 27, 1787. Four of Shays’s men were killed at Springfield, none at Petersham, and more than thirty at Sheffield, where cannon and grapeshot were used by the militia. Three militiamen lost their lives. There were several wounded on both sides. History records these events and others related to it as Shays’ Rebellion. Though the rebels lost each battle, their actions served to shock the general population to take action, and prompted the Congress that gathered in Philadelphia in May of 1787 to seek laws that would avert further such tragedies. Shays’s record of military service as a captain in the Continental Army, with honorable service in several major battles, is accurate. The parts played in these episodes by Matthew and Caleb Dunson and Billy Weems and Eli Stroud are fictional (Bernstein, Are We to Be a Nation?, pp. 93–95; Freeman, Washington, p. 534; Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, pp. 447–48).
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