Are you a Washington… an Adams … or a Jefferson?
Shay’s Rebellion and the Trump protesters

Everyone has given their two cents about the mob taking over the Capital this week, and almost everyone used words like “shocked” … “outraged” and said this was the end of the world, and new Draconian laws must be created so that “we must crush out this murderous pest with an iron fist” … no, hold on… that was Hitler after the Reichstag caught on fire.   
However, I am not one who is “shocked” or “outraged”.   This was inevitable and it will happen again.   I look at it from the Founding Father’s viewpoints, and you have to ask yourself, which one are you?   Are you a Washington, an Adams or a Jefferson?
When this nation first began, we had a mediocre set of rules running the country called the Articles of Confederation.   Now, these were the first attempts to create a unified nation, but it failed miserably.  The Articles had no real power.   Each state could make their own trade laws with other nations, and due to that some states weren’t able to export products.   Then there was the lack of agreement over borders, and we had several small wars going on between the states.   In North Carolina there was the “Franklin War” over the border around Knoxville.   The people who lived in what is now Tennessee wanted it to be in their new state, they were going to call “Franklin”.   
There was also an ugly little war up in New York between New York and New Hampshire called the Border War and another between Connecticut and Pennsylvania called the Pennamite-Yankee War.   There were also active espionage going on to try to get the South to become part of Spanish Mexico and not be part of the new nation.  While all this was going on, the average citizen was losing hope.  They just fought a war on the promise of freedom and equality, and what they were getting was politicians who were constantly fighting and getting nothing done.  
The soldiers who had spent eight years fighting to be free from Britain, came home to find their homes and farms seized by the banks to pay off their debts.   You see, many of these soldiers fought the entire time and were never really paid.   Congress gave them paper money, that was OK for wiping your rear end, but it wouldn’t pay for debts.   These soldiers were owed a lot of money… a HUGE amount, but Congress could not quit arguing over stupid petty things to actually come up with a solution.  
One of these men who had fought for liberty was Captain Daniel Shay in Massachusetts.   Shay was an honorable man and a formidable soldier.   He had fought at Bunker Hill in the beginning, and then continued fighting through the war.  He was awarded a sword from the Marquis de Lafayette for his bravery on the field of battle.   After fighting for five years, he was wounded in battle, by a sword, and he was discharged due to those wounds.   When he came home, he tried to keep his farm going, but the debts grew and grew and now he was about to end up losing his farm, and he had enough.   He knew how to fight, and the men he fought with were also about to lose their homes, so they joined him.  Shay gathered his army and began marching on Springfield, where the military weapons were made.   After they had ransacked the armory there, he was going to “march directly to Boston, plunder it, and . . . destroy the nest of devils, who by their influence make the Court enact what they please, burn it and lay the town of Boston in ashes.” 
In Boston were the politicians, almost all were lawyers, like the modern-day Democrat party (yep, every single one in power is a lawyer, look it up).   Shay and his men knew that these politicians were the problem.  One historian, George Minot, wrote that Shay and his men “had been led to think that they were contending against a power which would enslave them—a rising aristocracy, supported by the cunning of dishonest lawyers.”  Another militiaman wrote that Shay and his armed men were going against “a large swarm of lawyers . . . who caused more damage to the people at large, especially, the common farmers, than the savage beasts of prey.”
The Governor of Massachusetts and the lawyer/politicians were scared of this mob of angry men and created their own army to put it down.   They paid their 1,200-man militia £6,000, that had been borrowed from the same rich lawyers.  So now it was a war of farmers versus rich lawyers and merchant, almost the same as the Regulator War in North Carolina in 1770.   In fact, it was so much like it that Shay’s men nicknamed themselves the Regulators.   Civil War had broken out in Massachusetts.  
When Shay’s army met the Massachusetts’s militia, under the command of representative General William Shepard, they stopped and talked.  Shay stated “I am here in defense of that country that you are endeavoring to destroy.”  Then Shay turned to his men and said, “March, God damn you, march.”
Sheperd ordered the first volley to be shot over the heads of Shay’s men, but they kept coming.   He ordered the next volley to be fire into the ranks of the Regulators… many who they had served with in the war.  Four of Shay’s men were killed and 20 wounded.   Shay had his men retreat.  This is similar to the pro-Trump protest, there were four dead, though only one was killed by gunfire… an unarmed woman shot through a barricaded door.   The other three died of health problems.  
Shay and his men withdrew to two hills near Pelham and prepared to do their own Bunker Hill.   Facing them now was another militia army, led by General Benjamin Lincoln… the guy that commanded US forces in the worst defeat in US history, until the Philippines in WWII (capture of Charleston in 1780).  Lincoln asked Shay to surrender, but Shay demanded pardons for all his men first.   That wasn’t going to happen, so another fight erupted.   In between assaults, Shay and his men were able to get away again.  
A February blizzard descended upon them and Lincoln had his militia march in shoulder-high snow drifts, but they surprised Shay’s men, capturing 150 of them.   Shay and only a handful were able to get away.  Shay made one more stand, trying to fight for the freedom of his men, but they were finally defeated and scattered.   Shay’s men still fought on as guerillas, well into the spring, but the rebellion was over.  
However, new groups of rebels rose up and conducted guerilla warfare, even raiding General Sheperd’s farm and attacking General Lincoln was resting at a hot spring.   Eventually the politicians granted a pardon for all the rebels, except Shay and his leaders … who still hadn’t been captured.   They would be put to death if caught.  
This whole issue was mainly about how this new nation was not working.  This “perfect union” was not being held together, there was no unity, and now there needed to be a more perfect union.   To see the viewpoint of the Founders, look at one who wanted all of the rebels to be put to death, one who wanted leniency, and one who wanted the rebels to keep it up until the nation finally changed.  
John Adams was the one who wanted death to all.  He wrote “the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death”.   Adams also wrote that Shay’s men were “Ignorant, wrestless desperadoes, without conscience or principals, have led a deluded multitude to follow their standard, under pretence of grievences which have no existance but in their immaginations.”  
Adams’ son, John Quincy, listened to his father and also wrote that Shay’s men were ““malcontents who must look to themselves, to their idleness, to their dissipation, and extravagances.”
In Adams you see the Democrats and the media of today.   Though the “Stop the Steal” rally had all races and religions there, to include a contingent from the “Blacks for Trump”, “Latinos for Trump” and “Indians for Trump”, all the media could say was that they were all “white supremacists” … kind of like Adams saying Shay’s men had no “conscience or principals”, though the very same men fought for eight years for the freedom of a nation, while John Adams sat in peace and security.  
Thomas Jefferson though, he believed that Shay’s Rebellion was a good thing.  Shay had tried to use peaceful measures, tried to get the rich lawyer/politicians to allow him to open up his farm again, but they stopped him at every measure.   Shay had no other option left to force change, except through force.   Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration that when a government abused their power, and could not be changed through peaceful measures, then the people have the “right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security”.   This was not Jefferson’s idea, but it came from the Godfather of the US, John Locke in his writings on the rights of man.  
So, Jefferson looked at the rebellion as a way to get the government to wake up… to change, or more violence like this would happen again.  Jefferson wrote to Abigail Adams, that as for Shay and his men, “I hope they pardoned them.  The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.  It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.  I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.”
 Jefferson, still in Paris, wrote to William Smith, “what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?  Let them take arms.  The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two?”  He included the famous quote that you see on the back of t-shirts and at gun shows on posters, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.   It is it's natural manure.”
So, Jefferson is like those on the right, who have been building up anger for years and years.   The Democrat Congress continues to pass laws that destroy their “economy”, such as Obama-care, that devastated businesses for almost a decade now.   The Democrats then passed laws effectively shutting down businesses, over a virus that hardly kills anyone at all, with a 99.7% survival rate.   The same lawyer/politicians will not let people work, forcing them to stay at home, and due to this they are just like Shay, and the bills must be paid.  So, what happened at the Congress a few days ago was inevitable, but the only saving grace is none of the new Regulators were armed.  
The third Founding Father, George Washington, felt sickened by this.   He knew Captain Shay and he knew the men who fought with Shay against the lawyer/politicians.  Washington wrote to Henry Knox, “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.” 
Washington was also angry at the do-nothing Congress created by the Articles of Confederation.   He wrote that if the government “shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws . . . anarchy & confusion must prevail.”
Washington knew this would happen again.   You can’t keep feeding the people bullshit and expect them to blindly follow you anymore.   Washington wrote that if the government “keeps the mass of people in profound ignorance, it must abide the consequences when the body politic is convulsed.” 
Washington was one of those outraged, but Washington was also the one man in all the colonies that everyone respected…. EVERYONE.   He was the man who could have been king, but instead he turned it down, and passed over all power to a Congress, then went home to be a farmer again like Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus of Rome.   Even the King of England said Washington was the “most distinguished of any man living, and … the greatest character of the age” due to turning down all that power.  
So, Washington went to Congress and he told them they needed to change.   NOW!  No more Shay’s Rebellions.   Due to Washington’s insistence, a convention was held in Philadelphia, to rewrite the rules for this new nation.   We know it today as the Constitution.  
Now, what about Shay?  He continued moving from town to town, using aliases and he told all that he would never be taken alive.  He found refuge in New Hampshire and Vermont, and then in 1788 he asked for a pardon.   John Hancock, a friend toward Shay’s rebels, had run for governor and won, and he is the one that gave Shay his pardon.  He even got his pension for his service, once the new Congress got their collective heads out of their asses.  
Today, being related to Shay is a mark of honor.   He is the one man, out of the entire nation, that forced the nation to change, by a force of arms, by violence, to create the Constitution of the United States.  
So, after this week’s “outrage” when Trump supporters stormed the Congress (well, were invited in by the capital police… but, semantics… right?) … but this week are you an Adams, are you a Jefferson or are you a Washington?   None of you are Shay, as you sat home on this one… but from your chair how do you compare to the Founders?
For me, I am Jefferson.   I think this was a good thing.   This showed the Congress that there is enough anger to force this rebellion to heights no one thought possible.   But, will this Congress learn from this, or will the rich “lawyer/politicians” just go on and continue their unjust laws, until there is another uprising?   The next one might be the one where all the hundreds of thousands show up with arms.