A Little Rebellion

Miss Starkey, author of the famed Death in Massachusetts, with her customary magic touch here deals with the tragic interplay of arrogance in high places and ignorance in low.

TIME: the wake of the American Revolution

PLACE: western Massachusetts

SUBJECT: the series of revolts culminating in Shays’ Rebellion

PROVOCATION: plain human misery and the heartbreak and disillusionment that await the victors of wars

The Yankee farmer, having thrown off the tyranny of the British King, dreamed of a Utopia in which taxes would be trifling and debts remitted. Instead they faced the harsh edicts of the Boston aristocrats. Was this not enough to anger a man?

So the embattled farmers of ‘76 once more picked up their muskets and took to the road, animated by the same spirit that had moved them 10 years before. They were supported by much of the old revolutionary paraphernalia: county conventions, committees of correspondence, resources solemnly taken.

It wasn’t a long war. But it had consequences. No event that called Washington back to public life and impelled thirteen state governments of violently divergent interests to form a more perfect union can be lightly dismissed.

Both sides soon invented their devils, for we have always been eager to believe, especially in rural America, in some great but essentially simple conspiracy in high places. The embattled farmers thought the Boston aristocrats aimed at tyranny, and Governor Bowdoin thought that British agents were behind the rebellion. Then as now, it was a time of inflation, high taxes, loyalty oaths—and anxiety. Then as now, arrogance and ignorance did their evil work.

Miss Starkey, as always, has so steeped herself in the records left by plain people that the book reads like a novel, although there is not one word of fiction in it. It is a stirring revelation, in dramatic form, of the eternal conflict between man’s political illusions and hard reality.