Bristol County, Massachusetts - Chapter 6: Taunton in the Revolution, 1924

Although a succession of unparalleled events has rapidly transpired during the generation of which we are a part, that have tended to enshadow and belittle the former times, it is to our credit that we still possess respect for all eras of our country's history, if only as stepping-stones that have led us up to the present. We must accept such as living facts of former days, appreciating their vital values to their generations and to our own.

The impressions made upon Taunton by the War of the Revolution, for example, cannot be over-estimated. The independent state that was then won was the culmination of much struggle, and the independent government under which we now live is the continuous result. No one knows just when the murmurs began to precede the shouts of defiance against the over-exactions of an insufferable ruler, but Taunton was one of the foremost of New England towns to lead in a revolt that secured freedom from an autocratic oppression.

Though the word "Independence" was then unpopular in public, at any rate, and though legislative bodies and public men generally "totally disavowed" independence, yet it can now be seen that the latter was a persistent motive and undercurrent of the day's forces. The anger of the obdurate George III, because of the high-handed and rebellious procedure of the Boston tea party, resulted in the Boston Port bill, that closed Boston to all commerce, and then came the complete overturn and the strike for liberty. Small towns everywhere were fully as brave as cities in resistance; and there were brave souls in Taunton, for on September 28, 1774, indignation meetings were already being held at the court house, with Zephaniah Leonard as chairman, and David Cobb as clerk, and with protesting delegates present from Dartmouth, Rehoboth, Freetown, Dighton, Swansea, Norton, Mansfield, Raynham, Berkley and Easton, at which time resolutions were adopted against the "Pretended authority of a British parliament" - Bristol county's own Declaration of Independence, though not conceded as such at the time.

Yet, only a month later, or in October, 1774, the unpent spirit of the town asserted itself in the unfurling of a red flag on Taunton Green, with its inscription, "Liberty and Union; Union and Liberty." That was rebelry; and again, when Taunton women held their remonstrant tea party at Luscombtown, near the Neck of Land bridge, that, too, was rebelry. These incidents took place long before war was declared or intended. And the Declaration of Independence had not been signed at Philadelphia when Colonel Gilbert, Dr. McKinstry, Daniel Leonard and other tories were ordered out of town. And it was a full year before that famous document was drawn up that Taunton's Committee of Safety, Inspection and Correspondence began to rule local proceedings.

The following were the active patriots of the hour in Taunton: George Godfrey, Esq., Major Richard Godfrey, Ensign Ichabod Leonard, Lieutenant Elisha Barney, Lieutenant Ebenezer Cobb, Lieutenant Benjamin Dean, Jr., Mr. Nicholas Baylies, Benjamin Williams, Esq., Colonel George Williams, Lieutenant Edward Blake, Captain Henry Hodges, Lieutenant Solomon Dean, Captain Simeon Williams, James Williams, Jr., Lieutenant William Thayer, Mr. Elijah Lincoln, Dr. David Cobb, Mr. John Adam, Mr. Josiah Crocker, Robert Luscombe, Esq., Mr. John Keen. This committee was literally the moving spirit of the day, here. They took into their care the estates of Daniel Leonard, Dr. William McKinstry, and other persons who had fled to Boston for Loyalist protection. They gave heed to every opportunity for the entry of the new State through Taunton's doors, though they knew it not. They warned merchants not to export any flaxseed; they took action with regard to the vending for the enemy's sake of rum, molasrrs or English goods; and they voted to re- serve the money usually paid for the support of Boston's poor for Taunton's own use. The committee were in full cry after certain shopkeepers who were profiteering in the sale of salt. To their hands was also committed the care of the Highland prisoners in Taunton, to "forbid their strolling or walking on the Lord's Day," or "at any unseasonable time of night, without leave from the head of the family to which they respectively belong."

And, though but comparatively few men gathered in Philadelphia could sign the greater Declaration, there were as brave men in Taunton, placing their signatures to our own "Solemn League and Covenant," which expressed their independent stand, as prescribed by the Province laws of May lst, 1776. These were the local signers:

Yet at the same time special honors were then accorded Taunton's signer of the National Declaration of Independence, Robert Treat Paine, who for twenty years, or from 1761 to 1781, lived here, though he was born in Boston, in 1731. He removed from Taunton to Boston, where he was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court in 1790, and where he died May 12, 1814, at the age of eighty-three years. The Robert Treat Paine monument, by Richard E. Brooks, sculptor, was dedicated at Taunton, November 15, 1904.

Taunton's Minute-Men had been chosen in 1775 in the companies of Abiathar Leonard, James Williams and Robert Crossman, according to the recommendations of the Provincial Congress - these marching from Taunton to Roxbury, April 10, 1775. The names of these courageous men and those of others in the muster rolls are fully recorded in the volumes of the "Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolution," as well as in §. H. Emery's "History of Taunton." The task of recording them has been a voluminous one and a life work, and there are no books that receive more frequent consultation by patriotic societies for purposes of Revolutionary pedigree.

Upon the call of Congress in 1775 that 13,600 men be raised in Massachusetts of the 30,000 required for the colony's defence, Taunton furnished one entire company - Captain Oliver Soper's, in Colonel Timothy Walker's

The reorganization of the Bristol county militia was completed in the spring of 1776, and Colonel George Godfrey, formerly colonel of the East Division of the Third Regiment of the county, was made brigadier-general, seven companies of the Third Regiment being from Taunton, under Captains Elisha Barney, Edward Blake; Joshua Wilbore, Ebenezer Dean, Robert Crossman, Josiah King and Ichabod Leonard. Throughout the Revolution, Taunton men made their enlistments, or were drafted for varying periods in different companies, under different leaders; but upon the expiration of their time they were subject to the orders of the brigadiergeneral for the rendering of service in their own respective companies in the Third Regiment.

Enlistments began, upon the organization of the Bristol county brigade in 1776, in the companies of Captains Oliver Soper, Matthew Randall and Joshua Wilbore; and a regiment from that brigade was secured in August that year for two months' duty in New York, under command of Colonel Thomas Carpenter, among the field and staff officers being: James Williams, Jr., major, and William Sever, adjutant, both of Taunton. Also, a company from Taunton, under command of Captain Robert Crossman, was enrolled from the Taunton companies of the Third Regiment for service under Colonel Carpenter, while enlistments of Taunton men were recorded in the company of Captain Zebedee Redding. The five companies in the Bristol county brigade performed service at Warren, Rhode Island, in 1776, when the field and staff officers were Colonel George Williams, Lieutenant-Colonel Zephaniah Leonard, Adjutant Mason Shaw, Major James Williams, Jr., and Quartermaster George Williams (2nd).

Upon the occasion of the alarm in Rhode Island, December 8, 1776, Taunton soldiers were on duty with their companies in command of Captains Edward Blake, Lieutenant Noah Dean, Captain Joshua Wilbore, Robert Crossman, Ebenezer Dean and Samuel Fales; and in that year, too, there were a large number of drafts from this section for service in New York.

It was during this campaign that Rey. Caleb Barnum died of illness contracted in the army. He had been seventh pastor of the Congregational church in Taunton, and was serving as chaplain in Colonel John Greaton's regiment.

In the campaign of 1777, David Cobb, of Taunton, was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of Colonel Henry Jackson's Sixteenth Regiment of the Continental Line; and at the same time Hodijah Baylies entered the service as a lieutenant of a company in this regiment. In the latter part of that year many Taunton men were engaged in secret expeditions, and were on duty upon various alarms. The population of Taunton over sixteen years of age then was 826. In 1778, James Williams, of Taunton, was appointed the superintendent for Bristol county to receive and send forward men for completing fifteen battalions of Continental troops "to be raised in the State of Massachusetts Bay."

A town meeting was held here in April, 1779, to choose a committee "to hire for the town as reasonable as may be the men for the Continental or State service that the town or several captains or commanders of com- panies shall be called upon to raise for ye future." The next year, August, 1780, these companies performed service in the Third Regiment, attached to the Bristol county brigade, under command of Brigadier-General Godfrey, at Howland's Ferry, in Tiverton, at the alarm, and under Captain Joshua Wilbore, Josiah King, Ichabod Leonard, James Macomber, Peletiah Eddy and Edward Blake. In the 1781 campaign every effort was made to furnish the last quota of Taunton for the Revolutionary War, and Taunton not only furnished men, but also munitions, food and clothing.

April 19, 1783, the war was ended. We think of those men today, and of many others who served from Taunton, as part of the grand army of the Revolution who guarded the town and country, and defended the principles of liberty as they knew them, through those trying times. We respect the Spirit of '76 as forerunner of the Spirit of '61, and of the still greater struggle of our own times for world freedom.

Shays' Rebellion - There are but few communities that, while the great body of the State has been progressing through its wars to the hoped-for haven of its ideals of national freedom, have not had their own local antagonisms. Such an uprising, throughout Massachusetts, at least, was that called Shays's Rebellion, and whose performances clashed with court sittings at Taunton.

The American people had won what they had fought for - a separate state of democracy. Now they found themselves in rough waters again, for while on their way to those clearer spaces of liberty that were their goal, they must battle through the shoals of a new and heavier kind of taxation in order to pay their own debts of war. Great was independence, but the debt thereof was to be surmounted. Hence Shays's Rebellion, and attempts at lawlessness on the part of certain elements of the community. So it was that the great burden of taxation necessarily borne by the country after the Revolutionary War, and the general discontent of the people that so large a part of the populace must barter, instead of having a regular circulating medium, were the main causes for the gathering of mobs in many sections, upon which occasions they were frequently incited to deeds of lawlessness. At this period the courts were burdened with suits for ordinary debts, and men like Daniel Shays were impatient of the new struggle and determined upon open rebellion and violence. "General" Daniel Shays had been a captain in the Revolutionary army, and as he was now among the bitterly disaffected, he was looked upon as the military leader of the insurrection that went by his name.

There are traditions many concerning doings and sayings at that time, but the plain facts are that one of many mobs in the State gathered at Taunton to try to prevent the sitting of the October term of the Supreme Court in 1786; but the government received successful protection from the militia of this division. The insurgents, 182 in number, under the lead of Captain David Valentine, of Freetown, appeared in Taunton, some with arms, after having alarmed the countryside with circulated reports of their rebelry. General David Cobb, who was not only a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, but also a major-general of the Fifth Division of the Militia, made such concise exp:anations of the intentions of the court and the militia that the mob soon dispersed. The field-piece in use at that time on the part of the militia is the cannon now preserved at Historical

Hall, in Taunton, and known as "Old Toby," from Tobias Gilmore, a colored soldier from Raynham, a member of the military household of Washington, and for whom the cannon was purchased. On October 15, 1897, the Old Colony Historical Society dedicated a tablet at the Green opposite the court house to mark the spot where the dispersal took place.

The Embargo of 1807, and the War of 1812-14, that was sure to ensue, may well be looked upon today as a sort of stumbling-block set in the path of the young Republic pursuing its way through the new-found fields of a national freedom. Nothing might long withstand her progress, but hostile events of that period were of such a character as to hinder the advancement of the nation. The British spoliation of American vessels of their crews, beginning with the impressment of four seamen from the "Chesapeake" by the man-o'-war "Leopard"' - three of those men being Americans - again roused the guards of the nation. The outrage took place in June, 1807, and soon after, in that month, the Third Regiment, Bristol County Brigade, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Lincoln, was "ready, armed and equipped, to march at a moment's warning." .

Though the Embargo to prevent British-ships of war from entering United States harbors was repealed in 1809, yet the piracy against American vessels by the British was continued, until the United States declared war on England, June 19, 1812. Every city and town forthwith sprang to arms. In October, Lieutenant-Colonel Nathaniel Fales ordered the troops of the Third Regiment to assemble on Berkley Common for review; and July 10, 1814, Colonel Silas Shepard's company was ordered to Clark's Harbor, New Bedford. In August that year, the Green at Taunton was appointed a regimental alarm post of the Third Regiment. In consequence of brigade order of August 26, a detachment of sixty men from Taunton was ordered to New Bedford, Benjamin Lincoln, lieutenant-colonel. Troops were also ofdered to assemble at Elliot's Corner, September 27, thence to march to New Bedford. Stationed in New Bedford soon thereafter were the companies of Captains Joseph Reed and Seth Staples, Cromwell Washburn, of Taunton, at this time being adjutant of the Third Regiment. Taunton's part in this war was that of instant readiness for coast defence.

Historians agree that the Mexican war was our own side-stepping from the legitimate highway, freedom-ward. Our government, not Mexico, was to blame for the war. Yet, faithful to the call, 1047 men went from Massachusetts, among whom there were five Taunton men. But this digression and its sequences brought this country great and valuable territories. 'The Treaty of Guadaloupe was signed February 2, 1848, establishing the Rio Grande as the boundary mark between the two countries.