Document A - Shays Rebellion Source Gilder Lehrman Institute Primary Source Excerpt by George Washington

On January 25, 1787, Daniel Shays and his insurrectionists confronted a Massachusetts state militia force outside the
Springfield armory. Shays Rebellion had begun in the summer of 1786, when Shays, a former Continental Army captain,
and other western Massachusetts veterans and farmers formed an insurrection against the government for failing to
address their economic grievances. Upon the confrontation at the Springfield armory, the state militia forced Shays and
his followers to retreat to Worcester County, where they would be dispersed on February 4, leading to the end of the
rebellion.
On February 3, George Washington wrote to Henry Knox, conveying his thoughts on both the recent rebellion in
Massachusetts and the Philadelphia Convention. Of Shays Rebellion, Washington wrote, if three years ago any person
had told me that at this day, I should see such a formidable rebellion against the laws & constitutions of our own making
as now appears I should have thought him a bedlamite - a fit subject for a mad house. He wrote that if the government
shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws . . . anarchy & confusion must prevail.
Washington did not wish to attend the Philadelphia Convention because he doubted what might be accomplished. He
admitted that powers are wanting in government but wondered how such powers would be derived. He commented
on Knoxs plan for building a central national government, calling it energetic, and I dare say, in every point of view is
more desirable than the present one. However, pressure from friends like Knox, associates, and fellow Virginians such
as James Madison and Virginia Governor Edmund Randolphas well as Washingtons intention to do for the best, and
to act with proprietyled the future president to attend the convention.
Excerpt
The moment is, indeed, important! If government shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws; fresh maneuvers will be
displayed by the insurgents anarchy & confusion must prevail and every thing will be turned topsy turvey in that
State; where it is not probable the mischiefs will terminate.
In your letter of the 14
th
. you express a wish to know my intention respecting the Convention, proposed to be held at
Philad
a
, in May next. In confidence I inform you, that it is not, at this time, my purpose to attend it. When this matter
was first moved in the Assembly of this State, some of the principal characters, of it wrote to me, requesting to be
permitted to put my name in the delegation. To this I objected They again pressed, and I again refused; assigning
among other reasons my having declined meeting the Society of the Cincinnati at that place, about the same time; &
that I thought it would be disrespectful to that body (to whom I owd much) to be there on any other occasion.
Notwithstanding these intimations, my name was inserted in the Act; and an official [inserted: communication] thereof
made by the Executive to me; to whom, at the same time [inserted: that] I expressed my sense of the confidence
reposed in me, I declared, that as I saw no prospect of my attending, it was my wish that my name might not remain in
the delegation, to the exclusion of another. To this I have been requested, in emphatical terms, not to decide
absolutely, as no inconvenience would result from the non-appointment of another, at least for sometime. Thus the
matter stands, which is the reason of my saying to you in confidence that at present I retain my first intention not to
go.








Document B - Desperation, Zeal, and Murder: The Paxton Boys - By Andrew Kirk, Fall 2009.

Now, Sirs, I ween it is but right,
That we upon these Cananites,
Without delay should Vengeance take,
Both for our own, and the K k's sake [sic]:
Destroy them quite frae out the Land;
And for it we have God's Command.
The Paxtoniade, Christopher Gymnast
Although it bears an eerie resemblance to what could have been a creed from the Crusades, this excerpt is taken from a
short poem published in Philadelphia in 1764.The Paxtoniade is just a part of the surge of published pamphlets, essays,
and poems that are a direct result of the Paxton Boys rebellion. Their massacre of 20 peaceful Indians from a Conestoga
village followed a series of battles during which hundreds of frontiersmen and American Indians were killed. Death in
colonial Pennsylvania was unavoidable. Yet, these killings were different. The deaths of peaceful and friendly native
men, women, and children had a colossal impact on every Pennsylvanian from the uncharted Allegheny mountains to
the city of Philadelphia and everywhere in between. And, like lines from the poem, the crimes perpetrated by the
Paxton Boys illustrate the fundamental ideological divide between western, Protestant frontiersmen and the city-
dwelling Quakers who dominated the government of the time.
The Paxton Boys began as a small group of mostly Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who lived in Dauphin County (then called
Paxtang) in the later half of the 18th century. Angered by previous frequent raids by Indian tribes bordering English
settlements, members of the gang that formed in Paxton during the winter of 1763-64 had become weary of even the
friendly Conestoga Indians who had been living and trading with settlers for generations. Rumors quickly grew that the
Conestogas had been seen collaborating with hostile Indians bearing weapons. The mere idea of this (as if rumors count
as evidence) seemed to be too much for the Paxton Boys, who marched to the Conestoga Indian town on the morning of
December 14, 1763, and swiftly murdered six Conestogas while 14 others escaped.
The Paxton Boys, unsatisfied, continued to pursue the Indians who had fled to Lancaster and were locked up in a
guarded jailhouse for protection. The local Lancaster sheriff, John Hay, was in no way capable of handling the angry
Paxton mob that had traced the Conestogas to Lancaster. Sheriff Hay later wrote that any attempt to restrain the boys
would have been a Danger of Life to the Person attempting it, and that he, the coroner, and many others had indeed
put themselves in danger by opposing the mob. On December 27, the Paxton Boys completed their strike on the
defenseless Indians in the most inhumane way imaginable. William Henry, a resident of Lancaster, commented on the
atrocities that he witnessed unfold. This mans hand and feet had been chopped off with a tomahawk. In this manner
lay the whole of them, men, women and children spread about the prsion yard; shot, scalped, hackled and cut to
pieces. From the beginning there had never been proper justification for the annihilation of the last of these helpless
Conestoga Indians, but with this disgusting treatment of the fallen Indians it became apparent that not even a wildly-
construed argument of preemptive self-defense could be raised to justify these acts. The commonwealth of
Pennsylvania was stunned.
The underlying causes of the Conestoga Massacre can be traced back to over a decade of increasingly violent clashes
between American Indians and English settlers. They were both fighting, above all, for land. Ever since William Penn had
signed land agreements with the various Indian tribes over a century prior, there had been disputes resulting from
colonial expansion. Many American Indians felt that their end of the agreement was not being upheld. The seemingly
unending influx of the white settlers meant a constant expansion of Pennsylvanias borders westward. Indian raids on
white settlements became so common that the pressure to raise a state-funded militia for protection could no longer be
avoided by Pennsylvanias governing body. On April 14, 1756, all out war was declared on the Indians.
Warfare continued for many years, and reached its apex with the formation of Pontiacs Rebellion during the first half of
1763. The Ottawa Indians launched a devastating campaign against British forts and settlements in the back country.
From June to July, six British forts were captured by the Ottawas, who were eventually halted just outside of Fort Pitt. As
Lancasters Prothonotary Edward Shippen, founder of Shippensburg, wrote to his son, Savages will soon make inroads
through the whole Province, burning, & destroying everything as they go. Under these conditions, the Paxton Boys
were formed. The killings were the result of fear and desperation taken to extremes.
After the Paxton boys had finished with the murder of 20 innocent Conestoga Indians, they headed straight for
Philadelphia. The group was now gaining momentum, both in size and in public attention. The Paxton Boys now
numbered over 250 strong, and their infamy grew evermore as they traveled eastward. They had heard that 140 Indians
in the regions surrounding Paxton had fled to Philadelphia for sanctuary. The Paxton Boys dramatic entrance into
Germantown (then a town independent of Philadelphia) was a landmark event. It was the first physical standoff
between the citizens of what was becoming an increasingly divided state. The frontiersmen and women found
themselves pitted against the eastern Pennsylvanians, who generally supported a peaceful approach toward dealing
with Indian conflicts. Frontier Pennsylvanians like the Paxton Boys had been pleading for additional government
protection from the natives for over a decade, and finally their voices, albeit the most radical ones, were being united
and made known.
The deeper undertones of this standoff marked a major shift in the ideology of the commonwealth as a whole.
Pennsylvania was founded upon Quaker values and, until that point was politically controlled by Quakers. In his founding
of the commonwealth, William Penn started a tradition of treating all natives fairly and decently. The land he imagined
was coined the Peaceable Kingdom, a land where Indians and whites could coexist while contributing to each others
societies both through goods and ideas. A famous and telling speech at an Indian ceremony honoring Penn was
delivered by Opessah, a Conestoga leader, addressing the Loving and good Friend and Brother William Penn. In it,
Penn was commended for protecting the Indians from any Wrong from any of the People under his Government for as
long as the Sun and Moon endured. For longer than any other states history, those promises of peace were upheld.
But the Paxton Boys arrived in Philadelphia with a message of their own: peace was no longer an option. They
represented an increasingly more prevalent view that America was a promised land for Christians, and it should be
cleansed of the wickedness of the savages. The fundamental difference in ideologies of Pennsylvanias founder and the
Pennsylvanians who inhabited the west could not have been made more real than by the Paxton Boys steady march
toward Philadelphia. As Benjamin Franklin was was heard saying after learning of the murders of the Conestogas, It
grieves me to hear that our Frontier People are yet greater Barbarians than the Indians, and continue to murder them in
time of Peace. Franklin was surely aware that the principles upon which William Penn founded the commonwealth
were based on peace and fairness. He could not believe that fellow Pennsylvanians, in good conscience, could commit
an act that so blatantly violated such a legacy.