Footnotes and Further Reading

The Wider World - Punishment & Appeasement

Mercy or Retribution
Footnote # 1

Samuel Adams quoted in William Pencak, Samuel Adams and Shays's Rebellion, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), 64.

Footnote # 2

Gaillard Hunt ed, The Writings of James Madison: Comprising His Public Papers and His Private Correspondence, Including Numerous Letters and Documents Now for the First Time Printed (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1901) 2: 315.

Footnote # 3

'Report of Commissioners Appointed to Promise Pardon to Certain Offenders' Massachusetts Archives Collection, Records,189: 277, MA.

Footnote # 4

In Amherst, a Regulator stronghold, voter turnout was halved. Leonard Richards, Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), 38.

Footnote # 5

James Madison to Edmund Pendleton, 22 April 1787, Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison, 9 Vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900-10), 2: 354.

Footnote # 6

John Bly and Charles Rose were hanged on December 7, 1787 for looting in the course of their Regulator activities. Richards, Shays's Rebellion, 41.

Footnote # 7

Marion Starkey, A Little Rebellion, (New York: Alfread A. Knopf, 1955), 229.

Footnote # 8

Rufus King to Elbridge Gerry, 4 April 1787, Charles R. King, ed., The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, 6 Vols. (New York: 1894), 1: 217; James Madison, "Vices of the Political System of the United States," April 1787, Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison, 9 Vols. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1900-10), 2: 254; George Washington to Lafayette, 6 June 1787, Abott et al, eds. The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992-97), 5: 222.