General Cobb Boulder - Taunton, MA - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

In Taunton's downtown district, on the Taunton Green toward the courthouse is a boulder with a plaque on it that relates the historical event how General Cobb had repelled a mob in sympathy of Shays Rebellion.

The American Guide Series book for Massachusetts has the following for the marker:

TAUNTON, Largest City for Its Size
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POINTS OF INTEREST
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1. General Cobb Boulder, Taunton Green. At the September, 1786, term of the Common Pleas Court an armed mob in sympathy with Shays's Rebellion approached the courthouse an demanded that the court be not held. General Cobb, one of the justices, appeared on the steps and shouted 'Away with your whining. I will hold this court if I hold it in blood; I will sit as judge or die as a general.' The mob dispersed, but at the October sitting of the Supreme Court they assembled again. This time they found General Cobb ready for them with 400 men and a loaded cannon on the courthouse lawn. The General declared: 'If you want those papers, come and take them; but pass that line I fire, and the blood be on your own head.' This was the last instance of armed resistance in Bristol County.

-- American Guide Series: Massachusetts - A Guide to Its People and Places, p. 367, 369-370.

The tablet has the following text on it:

This tablet is erected by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to mark the spot where on the 25th of October, 1786, General David Cobb, in command of four hundred militia-men and volunteers, defeated a body of insurgents in Shays' Rebellion in their attempt to prevent the session of the Supreme Judicial Court in Taunton and to seize its papers. This event put an end to the Rebellion within the limits of the Old Colony.

Here also inOctober 1774 nearly two years before the Declaration of Independence, the citizens of Taunton raised a Union Flag bearing the scription 'Liberty and Union.'
Shays's Rebellion came about after the American Revolutionary War. In general, farmers were unable to pay debts due, in part, to depressed prices of produce, and in part to unpaid federal debts such as pensions from service in the Continental Army. The main action was in the Pioneer Valley area (roughly the Connecticut River Valley) where Daniel Shays led bands of people to disrupt court sessions and attempted to raid the Springfield Armory. The rebellion failed; however, the rebellion did show fatal flaws of the Articles of Confederation and later put in motion the drafting of the current U.S. Constitution.

Book: Massachusetts Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 367, 369-370 Year Originally Published: 1937

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