“I still think we should press the flank!” the brash young deputy ejected tersely. “We’re squandering our advantage!”
Captain Daniel Shays rubbed his tired eyes in frustration. “We’ve been over this, Hank,” he sighed, his exhaustion on this point rivaling his physical fatigue. Henry McCulloch was a good man–a true asset to the Regulation–whose passion and determination had earned him a seat at this table with the movement’s ostensible head, but Shays was seriously regretting including him in this meeting. Five years younger than Shays and without any military experience–with nary a poignant recollection of musket-fire whizzing past his head or near misses with mortar or grapeshot to temper his zeal–he was perhaps too eager to engage what he already considered the enemy. “This isn’t an assault, it’s a strategic mobilization. We mustn’t conduct ourselves as though we are in open hostilities!”
The two men sat with a third, occupying three sides of a heavy oaken table in the secluded upstairs meeting room of the Warriner House. They had been held up here for hours, burning the midnight oil and making last minute preparations for the next afternoon’s action. “Daniel’s right,” the older gentleman across the table from Henry chimed in. Jason Parmenter, thirteen years his Captain’s senior, not only had vivid battlefield memories to caution him against impertinence, but knew all too well the grief it could bring, having lost a son to the Revolution. “We should avoid violence as long as possible,” he muttered, casting his eyes downward grimly.
Henry persisted, unabated by the senior advisor’s wise words. “There is still time to send dispatches to Parsons and Day to quit the rendezvous and close on the Arsenal from all three directions,” he entreated, pointing to one of the crudely drawn maps of their objective and its surrounding terrain which were strewn about the table along with letters of correspondence. In approximately fourteen hours Shays would lead his twelve hundred some odd Regulators to rendezvous with Captain Eli Parsons’ force of two hundred and Captain Luke Day’s force of seven hundred just northeast of Continental Hill. From there they would march eight abreast to the Arsenal and demand access to its stores and shelter. “Even if no shots are fired our position will be strengthened by–”
“We mean,” Shays interrupted, “to occupy the Arsenal as allies to the militia, not through intimidation!” The Captain was attempting to thread the miniscule eye of a very fine needle, trying to strike a happy medium between a show of potential force and an open threat. The military gusto was a bluff, but it was crucial to Shays’ strategy. It was meant not to coerce as much as to dispel the notion that he and his ragged band were nothing but anarchists, as had been insinuated amongst those who refused to take up the cause.
The rumors had been swirling since the Regulation began, since belligerent and often armed men had started showing up at the court proceedings against their countrymen. Their endgame wasn’t anarchy, but the prevention of what they saw as the legal fleecing of hardworking, downtrodden folk–the expectation that newly imposed taxes were to be paid in gold and silver that was exceedingly difficult to come by. Shays believed their ends were just, but they were hopelessly chaotic in their means, possessing en masse the same volatile dichotomy that was on full display in McCulloch.
“Then what’s the point of all this?” the younger man spat, gesturing wildly to the maps.
Shays remained stoic, resisting the urge to shout his impudent subordinate down, instead staring ahead at the flames in the fireplace at the back of the room. The pops and hisses of the crackling logs filled the silence after Henry’s excited outburst.
“We’re preparing for the remote possibility that they offer resistance,” Parmenter interjected, shaking off his malaise. The words tasted bitter on his tongue. He knew, despite the assured posture he shared with the Captain, that the chance was not so remote. He also knew, though, that daunting odds were not insurmountable with the right leadership. He knew that when the cause was just, the plan sound, and the chain of command respected, nothing was impossible.
“Don’t you see, Dan?! If peace was in the cards we would have had our way with the petitions!” Henry nearly shouted. A sharp look from Shays softening his tone, he continued with a strained composure, “This government has shown they won’t be swayed by reason or appeals to dignity. Their message is loud and clear: submit or be prepared to fight.”
McCulloch’s impulsive vehemence was nothing new. He had been impetuous for as long as Shays had known him, since the early days of the Regulation when the two had met with other concerned citizens in Conkey’s Tavern, a favorite haunt in their hometown of Pelham, to decide what to do about the government’s deaf ear. At the time the Captain had been as determined to find an alternative to flashing muskets before the very personifications of law and order as he was to make end roads with the authorities. Henry, on the other hand, welcomed the court closings and had invited Shays to lead one such armed delegation in August. The veteran soldier declined, hoping that without his involvement the movement’s lack of credibility would cause it to fizzle.
Instead it proceeded to shut down the county Court of Common Pleas, escalating things further still. After that, there had been talk of indictments for the leaders, which lead to a call among the Regulators to up the ante yet again by shutting down the Supreme Judicial Court as it made its rounds in Springfield the next month. This time inaction was not an option. With or without a careful leader at their head, the Regulators would oppose the government. Shays’ only hope of halting the ratcheting tensions was to be such a leader, to whip them into a resistance worth listening to.
Captain Shays dared not tamp down the fervor that McCulloch and his ilk displayed. He needed their passion and their numbers, a fact to which the young advisor owed his presence at the table; but, like the forces the Captain had lead in his first foray to Springfield in September, McCulloch needed to be checked.
“I’m not naïve, Hank,” Shays found his voice again, marshaling all of his patience to remain on an even keel. “I know this might come to blows. Everybody here is prepared for that possibility, but if these reports can be believed and Shepherd has occupied Continental Hill, we have even more reason to believe that blood won’t be spilled tomorrow. By commandeering the Arsenal he’s already done as much to flout the law as we have any intention of doing,
“I’ve spoken with him before, reasoned with him. He didn’t want a fight in September and he won’t want one now,” the Captain recalled, pondering the General’s character back on that autumn day when he first took his place at the head of the movement that would soon be synonymous with his name. The state militia, commanded by General William Shepherd, had been trotted out to defend the Courthouse. The two veterans of the Revolution had parlayed for some time, and though Shepherd officially towed the government line that day, he essentially gave the Regulators what they wanted. The judges left without conducting their intended business and the Regulators were free to make a public spectacle of their influence. They even managed to reconnoiter the Arsenal under the guise of a public demonstration around the premises, the resultant sketches of which littered their makeshift war room.
Most importantly to Shays, though, was that he had kept the peace.
This fact gave him hope as he was poised to return to Springfield.
He was confident that this honorable man would see the distinction between his composed squad and the rabble that continued to indiscriminately oppose any justice. He was confident that, when availed upon in earnest to remember that even Shepherd had been a rebel when the cause was just, the General would welcome them. And should he not, he was confident that the General, as eager to avoid bloodshed as was Shays, would again blink first, disband the militia, and forfeit the stores and shelter of the Arsenal. “I will not be the one to instigate violence by approaching in a threatening manner.”
Exasperated, close to defeat, McCullough ventured rhetorically, “And what if they view even your unassuming approach as a threat, if they are in defensive positions when we arrive?”
“Then,” Shays, sensing the cooling of his friend’s fervor, offered an olive branch, “we still have numbers enough to flank their positions after the fact. The point is dead, Hank. We rendezvous as planned.”
It wasn’t a perfect plan, but if his time in the service taught him anything it was that the perfect plan didn’t exist. Honestly, it wasn’t much of plan at all, and the more he poured over his preparations the more he realized there wasn’t much more he could do. All the same he needed to know that he was putting his best foot forward.
He was about to take a huge gamble, not only with his life but with the lives of roughly two thousand men and, frankly, children. In all his thirty-nine years, in all his brushes with death during the War, he had never been as vexed as he now was. His conscience could not allow him to take that gambit lightly.
“Again,” he began, “from the top.”
“Sir,” Parmenter offered, “we need sleep if we’re—”
“We’ll sleep when we get it. We need to be able to command these formations in our sleep if we have any hope of doing so in the field,” he lectured himself as much as his aides, concern creeping into his demeanor. Perhaps Jason was right. He would be no good to anyone tomorrow if he didn’t get any sleep, and the longer he belabored their tactics the more he gave lie to his carefully cultivated buoyancy. Looking into the tired faces of his men he resolved to go over the plan just once more before seeking the refuge of his temporary bed—the bench he now occupied. The Warriner family had been gracious enough to allow their home for his provisional headquarters, but he refused to impose upon them for any further comforts.
“Just once more, gentlemen. You have my word.”
Before they could turn their weary eyes back to the charts splayed out in front of them, a voice rang out in the street. Though too muffled by the wooden walls and thick, irregular window panes to make out any words, it was plainly unsure in its tenor yet unmistakably alarmed. The tension that lay thick, like a wet blanket, over their discourse a mere instant earlier evaporated as they exchanged concerned looks. A second voice responded, seemingly closer yet barely audible, as though the speaker was cautious not to project too much.
Shay’s nodded to Parmenter, who quickly began stuffing the papers from the table into a leather satchel he produced from the bench beside him. McCulloch headed for the door. Opening it, he looked over the railing of the walkway outside that led past doors on either side to matching staircases flanking the large chamber, open to the floor below. Seeing no movement from the sentry perched upon a stool near the first floor entrance, he ducked back into the room.
“The damn sentry’s aslee—”
Before the word passed his lips an explosion cut through the relative silence. Henry flinched dramatically, ducking instinctively while the more seasoned men merely perked up. The veterans exchanged knowing glances as if to say, louder than a musket, softer than a cannon; probably a backfire.