Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633

Sale 2633 - Lot 80

Price Realized: $ 938
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CONNECTICUT.) Samuel Huntington. Letter ordering the Connecticut militia to help squelch the insurgents of Shays' Rebellion. Autograph Letter Signed as Governor of Connecticut to militia general Heman Swift (retailed copy). 2 pages, 12 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches; vermin damage with some loss, full separations at horizontal folds, scrapbook remnant affixed to bottom of second page. Hartford, CT, 17 May 1787
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Additional Details

A few months after the main fighting of the anti-tax Shays' Rebellion, the Connecticut Governor was informed of "evil minded persons . . . endeavouring to raise insurection & inciting men to inlist to join the insurgents" in the rural border regions of his own state. Here he dispatches the head of his state militia to "by force to stop or prevent any insurection of the people":

"Whereas upon late information reciev'd that some evil minded persons now residing in the County of Litchfield are endeavouring to raise insurection & inciting men to inlist to join the insurgents in the Commonw[ealth] of Massachusetts against [this government?], the General Assembly now have [among other?] things resolved that His Excellency the Gover[nor] be desired to issue his orders to Gen'l Swift to call forth the whole or a part of the military force under his comma[nd] &c (as in the act of Assembly).

You are hereby directed & fully authorized after the best information that can be obtained if you shall judge it necessary to call forth such part or the whole as need shall require of the military force under your command, well equipt, & martch them to such place or places as you shall find most expedient, & by force to stop or prevent any insurection of the people, & in the most effectual mann[er] prevent them from joining [against?] said Commonwealth of Massac[husetts], or in any way or manner abetting aiding or [?]ing those insurgents in their opposition to law & government.

In the execution of these your orders you will give all necessary assistance in aid & support of the civil magistrates in the execution of their office when thereto required, and you will communicate to me the earliest intelligence of everyth[ing] material that shall occur in your proceedings.

Given at Hartford this 17th day of May AD 1787, S. Huntington, Governor."