“Bring em out! Bring out the silk stockins.”
“Do you hear that?” demanded Hubbard, triumphantly. “I tell you,
Hamlin,” he went on in a bolder tone, “you can't stop this thing,
whether you want to, or not, and if you know what's best for you, you
won't try. I tell you that crowd won't stand any fooling. They're mad,
and they're drunk, and they're bound to see a silk stocking whipped for
once in their lives, and by God they shall see it, too, for all you or
any other man. If you won't order em brought out, I will,” and he went
out.
Without a word, Perez took his pistols from the table, and followed him,
and Abner, who seemed irresolute and demoralized, came slowly after. The
report that Perez, in a sudden whim, now proposed to deprive them of
the treat he had promised them, had produced on the drunken and excited
crowd, all the effect which Hubbard had counted on, and as Perez reached
the front door of the house, a mass of men with brandished clubs and
muskets, were pressing around it, and the sentinel, hesitating and
frightened, in another moment would have given way and let them into the
building. As Perez, a pistol in either hand, appeared on the threshold,
the crowd recoiled a little.
“Stand back,” he said. “If any one of you tries to enter, I'll blow his
brains out. The men in here, are my prisoners, not yours. I took them
when most of you were snoring in bed, and I'll do what I please with
them. As for Hubbard and these West Stockbridge men, who make so much
noise, this is none of their business, anyway. If they don't like the
way we manage here in Stockbridge, let them go home.”
As he finished speaking, Abner shouldered his way by him, from within,
and stepped out between him and the crowd. Deliberately taking off his
coat and laying it down, and pitching his hat after it, he drawlingly
observed:
“Look a here, fellers. I be ez disapp'inted ez any on ye, not ter see
them fellers licked. But ye see, 'twuz the Cap'n that saved my back, an
it don't nohow lie in my mouth no more'n doos yourn to call names naow
he's tuk a noshin tew save theirn. So naow, Cap'n,” he continued, as
he drew his immense bulk squarely up, “I guess you won't need them
shooters. I'll break ther necks ez fass ez they come on.”
But they didn't come on. Perez' determined attitude and words,
especially his appeal to local prejudice, perhaps the most universal and
virulent of all human instincts, would have of themselves suffered to
check and divide the onset, and Abner's business-like proposal quite
ended the demonstration.
A couple of hours later, when the people had largely gone home to
dinner, the prisoners were quietly set free, and went to their homes
without attracting special attention. About twilight a carriage
rolled away from before Squire Woodbridge's door, and took the road
to Pittsfield. The next day it was known all over the village that
the Squire had left town, without giving out definitely when he would
return.
“Squire's kinder obstinit, but arter all he knows w'en he's licked,”
observed Abner, which was substantially the view generally taken of the
magnate's retirement from the field.
That night, Perez set a guard of a dozen men at the Fennell house, to
secure the town military stores against any possibility of recapture
by another silk stocking conspiracy, and to still further protect the
community against any violent enterprise, he organized a regular patrol
for the night. If any of the disaffected party were desperate enough
still to cherish the hope of restoring their fortunes by force, it must
needs have died in their breasts, as looking forth from their bedroom
windows, that night, they caught the gleam of the moonlight upon
the bayonet of the passing sentinel. But there was no need of such a
reminder. Decidedly, the spirit of the court party was broken. Had their
leaders actually undergone the whipping they had so narrowly escaped,
they would have scarcely been more impressed with the abject and
powerless situation in which they were left by the miscarriage of their
plot. The quasi military occupation of the town, the night after the
attempted revolution, was indeed welcomed by them and their terrified
families as some guarantee of order. So entirely had the revolution of
the past twenty-four hours changed their attitude toward Perez, that
they now looked on him as their saviour from the mob, and only possible
protector against indefinite lengths of lawlessness. It was among them,
rather than among the people, that the knowledge of his intended speedy
departure for New York, now produced the liveliest apprehensions. And
the most timid of the popular party were not more relieved than they,
when the next day it became known that he had declared his resolve to
give up going west, and remain in Stockbridge for the present.
It would sound much better if I could make out that this abrupt change
in his plans was on account of concern for the welfare of the community,
but such was not the case. His motive was wholly selfish. The key to it
was the discovery that as responsible chief of the mob, holding the
fate and fortunes of her friends in his power, he had a hold on Desire.
Unwilling brides were not the most unhappy wives. Yes, even to that
height had his hopes suddenly risen from the very dust in which they had
lain quite dead a few hours ago. As the poor ex-captain and farmer
she had held him afar off in supercilious scoorn; as the chief of the
insurgents she had come to him in tears and entreaty, had laid her
hand on his arm, had even given him her lips. With that scene in the
guardhouse to look back on, what might he not dare to hope.
His fate was in his own hands. Who could foresee the end of the epoch of
revolution and anarchy upon which the state now seemed entering. These
were times when the sword carved out fortunes and the soldier might
command the most brilliant rewards.
No sooner then had he resolved to stay in Stockbridge, than he set about
strengthening his hold on his followers, and imparting a more regular
military organization to the insurgent element in the town. The Fennell
house was adopted as a regular headquarters, and a young hemlock
tree, by way of rebel standard, planted before the door. Night and day
patrols, with regular officers of the day, were organized, and about
a hundred men formed into a company and drilled daily on the green. A
large proportion of them having served in the revolution, they made a
very creditable appearance after a little practice. In their hats they
wore jauntily hemlock plumes, and old Continental uniforms being still
quite plentiful, with a little swapping and borrowing, enough army coats
were picked up to clothe pretty much the entire force.
One afternoon, as the drill was going on, a traveling carriage turned in
from the Boston road, drove across the green in front of the embattled
line, and turning down toward the Housatonic, stopped before the
Sedgwick house, and Theodore Sedgwick descended. The next day, as Perez
was walking along the street, he saw Dr. Partridge, Squire Edwards,
and a gentleman to him unknown, conversing. As he approached them, the
doctor said, in the good-humored, yet half-mocking tone characteristic
of him:
“Squire Sedgwick, let me introduce to you the Duke of Stockbridge,
Captain Perez Hamlin, to whose gracious protection we of the court
party, owe our lives and liberties at present.”
Sedgwick scanned Perez with evident curiosity, but merely bowed without
speaking, and the other passed on. Either somebody overheard the remark,
or the doctor repeated it elsewhere, for within a day or two it was all
over town, and henceforth, by general consent, half in jest, half in
recognition of the aptness of the title under the circumstances, Perez
was dubbed Duke of Stockbridge, or more briefly referred to as “The
Duke.”
The conversation which his passing had momentarily interrupted, was a
very grave one. Sedgwick had passed through Springfield in his carriage
on the twenty-seventh of September, and reported that he had found the
town full of armed men. The Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth
was to have met on the twenty-sixth, but 1200 insurgents, under Captain
Daniel Shays himself, were on hand to prevent it, and were confronted by
800 militia under General Shepard, who held the courthouse. The town was
divided into hostile camps, with regular lines of sentinels. At the time
Sedgwick had passed through, no actual collision had yet taken place,
but should the justices persist in their intention to hold court, there
would certainly be fighting, for it was justly apprehended by Shays
and his lieutenants that the court intended to proceed against them for
treason, and they would stop at nothing to prevent that. It was this
news which Sedgwick was imparting to the two gentlemen.
“We have a big business on our hands,” he said gravely, “a very big and
a very delicate business. A little bungling will be enough to turn it
into a civil war, with the chances all against the government.”
“I don't see that the government, as yet, has done anything,” said
Edwards. “Do they intend to leave everything to the mob?”
“Between us, there is really nothing that can be done just now,”
replied Sedgwick. “The passiveness of the government results from their
knowledge that the militia are not to be depended on. Why, as I passed
through Springfield, I saw whole companies of militia that had been
called out by the sheriff to protect the court, march, with drums
beating, over to the insurgents. No, gentlemen, there is actually
no force that could be confidently counted on against the mob save a
regiment or two in Boston. Weakness leaves the government no choice but
to adopt a policy of conciliation with the rascals, for the present, at
least. His Excellency has called the Legislature in extra session
the twenty-sixth, and a number of measures will at once be passed for
relief. If these do not put an end to the mobs, they will, it is hoped,
at least so far improve the public temper that a part of the militia
will be available.
“It is a mysterious Providence, indeed,” he continued, “that our state,
in the infancy of its independence, is left to undergo so fearful a
trial. Already there are many of the Tories who wag the head and say
'Aha, so would we have it,' averring that this insurrection is but the
first fruits of our liberty, and that the rest will be like unto it.”
“God grant that we may not have erred in throwing off the yoke of
the King,” said Edwards, gloomily. “I do confess that I have had much
exercise of mind upon that point during the trials of the past weeks.”
“I beg of you, sir, not to give way to such a frame,” said Sedgwick
earnestly, “for it is to gentlemen of your degree that the well disposed
look for guidance and encouragement in these times. And yet I am
constrained to admit that in Boston at no time in the late war, no, not
when our fortunes were at the lowest ebb, has there been such gloom as
now. And verily I could not choose but to share it, but for my belief
that the convention, which is shortly to sit in Philadelphia to devise
a more perfect union for the thirteen states, will pave the way for a
stronger government of the continent, and one that will guarantee us
not only against foreign invasion but domestic violence and insurrection
also.”
“We had best separate now,” said Partridge in a low voice. “If the
populace see but two or three of us having our heads together, they
straightway imagine that we are plotting against them, and I see those
fellows yonder are sending black looks this way already.
“I shall do myself the honor,” he added, to Sedgwick, “to call upon you
at your house for further consultation, since under the pretext of a
physician's duty, I am allowed by their high mightinesses, the rabble,
to go about more freely than is prudent for other gentlemen.”
The next day the news from Springfield, which Sedgwick had privately
brought, reached the village from other sources, together with the
developments since his passage through the town. It seemed that there
had indeed been no collision between the militia and the rebel force,
but it was because the Supreme Court had, after demurring for two days,
finally yielded to the orders of Captain Shays and adjourned, after
which the rebels took triumphant possession of the courthouse. The
elation which the news produced among the people was prodigious. Perez
doubled the patrols, and even then had to wink at a good many acts of
lawlessness at the expense of the friends of the courts. Nothing but his
personal interposition prevented a drunken gang from giving Sedgwick
a tin-pan serenade. As for Squire Edwards, he was glad to purchase
immunity at the expense of indiscriminate treating of the crowd.
Whether the Supreme Court would attempt to hold its regular session the
first week in October, at Great Barrington, was a point on which there
was a diversity of opinion. Before adjourning at Springfield, it had
indeed passed resolutions that it would not be expedient to go to
Berkshire, but it was loudly declared by many that this was a mere trick
to put the people off their guard, and prevent their assembling in arms
to stop the proceedings. Accordingly, when the time came, although the
justices did not put in an appearance, a mob of several hundred men did,
and a very ugly mob it turned out to be, in fact the worst hitherto in
the entire course of the insurrection. Finding no court to stop, and
the empty jail affording no opportunity for another jail delivery, the
crowd, after loafing around town for a while and getting thirsty, began
to break into houses to get liquor. A beginning once made, this was
found to be such an amusing recreation that it was gone into generally,
and when liquor could not be found the men contented themselves with
appropriating other articles. The fun growing fast and furious, they
next began to hustle and stone prominent citizens known to be friendly
to the courts, as well as such as objected to having their houses
entered and gutted. When their victims broke away from them and fled,
being too drunk to overtake them it was quite natural that they should
fire their muskets after them, and if the bullets did not generally
hit their marks it was merely because the hands of the marksmen were
as unsteady as their legs. Some of the most prominent citizens of Great
Barrington passed the day hid in outhouses and garrets, while others,
mounted on fleet steeds, escaped amid a peltering of bullets, and took
refuge in neighboring towns, some going as far as Pittsfield before they
halted.
Squire Sedgwick chanced to be at Great Barrington, that day, at the
house of his brother-in-law, Justice Dwight. As a lawyer, an aristocrat,
and a member of the detested State Senate, he not only shared the
general unpopularity of those classes, but as prosecuting attorney for
the county, was in particularly evil odor with the lewd fellows of the
baser sort, who were to-day on the rampage. When the uproar was at its
height, word got around that he was in town, and immediately the mob
dropped whatever was in hand, and rushed in a body toward Dwight's
house. As they came in sight of the house a servant was holding
Sedgwick's gray by the bridle before the gate. Fearing that their prey
might yet escape them, the crowd burst into a run, brandishing cudgels,
guns and pitchforks, and yelling, “Kill him,” “Hang him,” “Shoot him.”
They were not fifty yards away when Sedgwick came out and deliberately
mounted his horse. The beast was a good one, and the distance was enough
to make his rider's escape perfectly secure. But instead of galloping
off, Sedgwick turned his horse's head toward the onrushing, hooting
multitude, and rode at a gentle trot directly toward them. It seemed
like madness, but the effect fully justified the cool daring that had
prompted the action. With the first forward step of the animal, the
moment the rider's intention became evident, the mob stopped dead,
and the uproar of execrations gave place to a silence of perfect
astonishment, in which you could have heard the swish of a bird's wing.
As the horse's head touched the line of men, they slunk aside as if they
knew not what they did, their eyes falling abashed before Sedgwick's
quiet glance and air, as devoid of a trace of fear as it was of
ostentatious defiance. The calm, unquestioning assumption that no one
would presume to stop him, was a moral force which paralyzed the arm of
the most reckless ruffian in the crowd. And so, checking his horse
when he would have gone faster, his features as composed as if he were
sitting in the Senate, and his bearing as cool and matter of course as
if he were on a promenade, he rode through the mob, and had passed out
of musket shot by the time the demoralized ruffians had begun to accuse
each other of cowardice, and each one to explain what he would have done
if he had been in somebody else's place, or would do again.
CHAPTER TWENTIETH
TWO CRITICAL INTERVIEWS
The news of the riot at Great Barrington, brought by Sedgwick, excited
a ferment of terror among the gentlemen's families in Stockbridge. Later
in the day when the report got around that the mob intended to visit the
latter place, and treat it in like manner, there was little less than a
panic. The real facts of the Great Barrington outrages, quite bad
enough in themselves, had been exaggerated ten-fold by rumor, and it was
believed that the town was in flames and the streets full of murder and
rapine. Some already began to barricade their doors, in preparation for
the worst, while others who had horses and vehicles prepared to convey a
part at least of their families and goods out of reach of the marauders.
There were some in Stockbridge who well remembered the alarm, “The
Indians are coming,” that summer Sunday, when the Schaghticokes came
down on the infant settlement, one and thirty years before. There
was scarcely wilder terror then, but one point of difference sadly
illustrated the distinction between a foreign invasion and a civil
war. Then all the people were in the same fright, but now the panic
was confined to the well-to-do families and those conscious of being
considered friendly to the courts. The poorer people looked on their
agitation with indifference, while some even jeered at it.
The afternoon wore away, however, and the expected mob failed to make
its appearance, whereupon the people gradually took heart again. Those
who had put their furniture into carts unloaded it, and those who had
buried their silver in their cellars dug it up to use on the tea table.
Nevertheless, along about dusk, a good many men living in Stockbridge,
who had been down to Great Barrington all day, came home drunk and
flushed with victory and these, with the aid of some of the same kidney
in the village, kept up a lively racket all the evening, varied with
petty outrages which Perez thought best to ignore, knowing too well the
precarious tenure of his authority, to endanger it by overstrictness.
Perhaps, indeed, he was not wholly averse to such occasional displays
by the mob, as would keep before the gentlemen of the town a
vivid impression of what would be in store for them if but for his
guardianship.
It was about eight o'clock in the evening that, coming in sight of the
store, he saw it besieged by a gang of men, whom Squire Edwards, visible
against the background of the lighted doorway, was expostulating with.
The men were drunk and reckless. They wanted rum and were bound to have
it, and on the other hand the Squire had evidently made up his mind that
if they got into his store in their present mood, they would be likely
to plunder him of whatever he had, and drawing valor from desperation,
was opposing, a resistance which involved no small personal peril. The
crowd, besides being drunk, was composed of the very men who had grudged
him his escape from the whipping-post a few days previous, and was by
no means disposed to stand on ceremony with him. Already he was being
hustled, his wig had been displaced, and his cane struck out of his
hand, and in another minute he would have been knocked down and the
store thronged. The light of a blazing bonfire on the green, threw
glimmering reflections upon the crowd before the store, and Edwards
catching sight of Perez' three-cornered hat cried in desperation:
“Captain Hamlin, will you let them kill me?”
In another moment Perez was up on the piazza in full view of the crowd,
which abashed a little by his presence, for a moment drew back a little.
“What do you want, men? You ought not to break into people's houses! You
musn't disgrace the hemlock.”
“Tha's all mighty fine, Cap'n,” said Meshech Little, “but we want suthin
tew drink.”
“Why don't you get it at the tavern?”
“The widder won't treat no more, an she's kinder got Abner bewitched
like, so's he backs her up, an we can't git nothin thar 'thout fightin
Abner, darn him.”
“I say Cap'n 'tain't fa'r fer yew ter be a interferin with all our fun,”
spoke up another.
“That's so,” said others. “Cap'n,” remarked Meshech, “yew jess let us
'lone, we hain't a techin yew, an we're baoun tew hev a time ter night.”
Perez knew well enough that to attempt to wholly thwart the intentions
of this excited and drunken crowd, would be beyond his power, or at
least involve a bloody riot, and so he replied, good-naturedly:
“That's all right, boys, you shall have your time, but it won't do to
break into houses. Go over to the guardhouse and tell Abe Konkapot that
I say you may have a couple of gallons of the town rum we seized the
other night.” This compromise was tumultuously accepted, the entire
crowd starting on a run toward the Fennell house, each hoping to get the
first advantage of the largess.
“Come in, Captain,” said Edwards, and Perez entered.
Mrs. Edwards, Desire and Jonathan were in the store, having hurried
thither from the inner living-rooms at the noise of the crowd, to share
if they could not repel, the danger which threatened the head of the
house. As Jonathan quickly closed and barred the door, Edwards said:
“Wife, I owe my property and perhaps my life, also, to Captain Hamlin.”
Mrs. Edwards dropped a stately curtsey, and said with a grand air which
made Perez feel as if her acknowledgments were a condescension quite
dwarfing his performance:
“I truly thank you for your succor.” He mumbled something, he could
not have said what, and then his eyes sought Desire, who stood a little
aside. As he met her eye, he found himself blushing with embarrassment
at thought of their last interview. He had supposed that it would be she
who would be confused and self-conscious when they met, but it was all
on his side. She looked cool, dignified and perfectly composed, quite as
if he were a stock or a stone. He could but wonder if he had remembered
the incidents correctly. What with Mrs. Edwards' grand air of
condescending politeness, and Desire's icy composure, he began to
feel that he needed to get outdoors again, where he could review the
situation and recover his equanimity. But on his making a movement in
that direction, Squire Edwards, who had no notion of parting with the
protection of his presence just at present, insisted that he should
first go into the parlor, and Mrs. Edwards dutifully and crushingly
seconding the invitation, he found himself without choice. The education
of the camp, while it may adapt a man to command other men, does not
necessarily fit him to shine in the salon. Perez stepped on his toes
once or twice in passing through the store, and in the parlor doorway,
to his intense mortification, jostled, heavily against Desire. He
plumped down in the easiest chair in the room, before being invited to
sit at all, and changing hastily from that to a stool too small for him,
at the third attempt settled in a chair of the right size. It was then
that he remembered to take off his hat, and having crossed and uncrossed
his legs several times, and tried numerous postures, finally sat bolt
upright, gripping the lapels of his coat with his hands. As for any
tender emotions on account of the girl who sat near him, he was scarcely
conscious of her presence, save as an element of embarrassment.