Springfield

Springfield's contribution to the Revolution can be stated simply: it made the guns. In 1777, George Washington selected Springfield as the site of a national armory, and for the next two centuries, the town would manufacture the weapons that armed American soldiers. The Springfield Armory is the most consequential military-industrial site of the Revolutionary era, and its influence extended far beyond the eighteenth century.

The choice of Springfield was strategic. Located on the Connecticut River, inland and protected from British naval attack, the town offered transportation routes, water power, and access to iron and timber. Henry Knox, Washington's artillery chief, helped establish the facility. What began as a storage depot for Continental Army munitions grew into a manufacturing center that produced muskets, cannon, and ammunition.

Springfield also occupies a complicated place in Revolutionary memory because of what happened after the war. Shays' Rebellion of 1786-87 — when debt-ridden western Massachusetts farmers, many of them veterans, marched on the Springfield Armory — exposed the failures of the Articles of Confederation and accelerated the movement toward the Constitutional Convention. The men who had fought for liberty found themselves crushed by the government they had created.

The town sits at the intersection of the Revolution's promise and its contradictions. The armory represents national power. Shays' Rebellion represents the people that power failed. Both stories are Springfield's, and both deserve telling.