Miracles and Massacres by Glenn Beck Read Free Book Online Page A

breath.
    Buffington posed Shepard’s question to Shays, who promptly answered, “Barracks and stores.”
    The Regulators pushed forward and were just about a hundred yards from the arsenal’s heavily guarded perimeter when Colonel Lyman warned, “Advance no further or you will be fired upon.”
    â€œThat’s all we want, by God!” jeered Captain Adam Wheeler, a French and Indian War veteran who stood stoutly at Shays’ side. Lyman nodded to Buffington, and the two galloped as fast as they could back to their lines.
    â€œTake the hill on which the arsenal and the Public Buildings stand!” Shays shouted to his troops, who responded with a great roar. If noise and enthusiasm could seize the arsenal, it would soon be theirs.
    While Shays was marching his men up the Boston Road on one side of the arsenal, Eli Parsons’ Berkshire County lads were attacking on another and Luke Day was bringing his men to bear from a third side.They hoped that their enormous show of force would force Shepard to fold.
    But something or rather someone was missing.
    Where was Day?
    Shays pondered the problem as his men inched perilously closer to Shepard’s muskets.
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    William Shepard’s prized possession on this late January afternoon was not either of his cannons—“government puppies,” his men called them—but a piece of paper hidden within his red-trimmed blue greatcoat. It was the letter commandeered the day before from a drunken messenger at Parsons’ Tavern, a critical communication from Luke Day to Daniel Shays.
    Day had been attempting to respond to Shays to inform him that he would not be available to assault General Shepard and the arsenal at 4:00 P.M . on January 25—this very hour—but that they would instead cordially arrive precisely twenty-four hours later.
    And, so, Shepard knew—though he took the precaution of posting some men on Main Street in case Day changed his mind—that he would have to defend only two sides of the arsenal, not three.
    Just as important, Daniel Shays did not know that.
    â€œMajor Stephens!” roared Shepard, “Fire o’er the rascals’ heads!”
    Two fuses burned, and Shepard prayed that such a warning might bring his opponents to their senses. Not merely for their sake, but for his as well. He had no way of really knowing how his own men might react to drawing the blood of their neighbors and fellow countrymen. His own army, he fretted, might dissolve at the first shot.
    BOOM! . . . BOOM!
    A great, deafening roar rose from the arsenal as two cannonballs sailed safely over the heads of Shays’ advancing hordes.
    Or had they sailed safely? Most of Shays’ army lay prone, facefirst, on the snowy ground, as if they were a field of harvested wheat.
    One by one, Shays’ army arose and dusted themselves off. “March on! March on!” Shays barked.
    â€œMajor Stephens,” Shepard ordered, his words catching in his throat as he uttered them, “Another volley—this time waist height .”
    BOOM! . . . BOOM! The cannons crashed again.
    Stephens’ cannon shot found its target, ripping through Shays’ ranks, tearing through blood, sinew, and bone like a sword through a sack of flour.
    Three men—Ezekiel Root and Ariel Webster, both of Gill, and Jabez Spicer of nearby Leyden—crumpled to the ground dead. A fourth, Shelburne’s John Hunter, was gravely injured. The vast remainder of Shays’ troops, save for a scattered handful frozen in fear, again fell prostrate to the snow-packed ground.
    â€œAgain!” cried Shepard, and more metal rocketed through the leaden sky. But above that roar, the men manning the arsenal’s guns heard a scream that shocked them to their very marrow. Artillery Sergeant John Chaloner had moved away too slowly from his cannon’s mouth. Its fearsome blast ripped both of