The following is a copy of a letter from Gen. Lincoln, to a person who applied to him in behalf of some of the insurgents, requesting his aid to obtain their pardon.
Hadley, Jan. 29, 1787.
SIR

YOU may assure the privates, not only of your town but those from the several towns now in arms against government; that if they will come in and surrender themselves to some Justice of the Peace within either of the counties of Hampshire or Worcester, deliver up their arms, and before him take and subscribe the oath of allegiance to this State, in three days from this date, they will be recommended to the General Court for a pardon of their past offences, in appearing in arms against the government of this Commonwealth.
I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
B. LINCOLN.

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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Following the abortive assault on the United States Arsenal at Springfield, men who had marched with the Regulators worried about being arrested for their activities. This notice from the commander of the government militia appeared on January 31 in the Hampshire Gazette Signed by General Benjamin Lincoln, it promised pardons to any rank-and-file Regulator came forward and surrendered his weapon, if he owned one, and took an oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On February 16, 1787, a Disqualification Act laid out the terms of the pardon and accompanying penalties for any "who have been, or may be guilty of Treason, or giving Aid or Support to the present REBELLION, and to whom a Pardon may be extended." The government did not offer pardons to men it had identified as leaders of the "rebellion," agreeing with Abigail Adams that Daniel Shays, Job Shattuck and other Regulator leaders were "Ignorant, restless desperados, without conscience or principles" who had "led a deluded multitude to follow their standard."

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