Daniel Dunglas Home

Daniel Dunglas Home , 1833-86, Scottish-American spiritualist medium, b. Edinburgh, Scotland. He was taken to the United States when a small child. At age 13 he claimed to have discovered his gifts for dealing with spirits, and from 1850 to his death he had a triumphant career as a medium, always retaining his amateur status by refusing money, although he did accept expensive gifts. In his drawing room séances furniture moved with no apparent cause, ghostly hands appeared, and furniture and Home himself would levitate in the air. There was much dispute about the validity of these highly physical manifestations of spirits. Though numerous efforts were made to expose him, none was successful.

Bibliography: See his Incidents in My Life (2 vol., 1863-72).

Shays, Daniel (1747?–1825) Revolutionary War army officer and insurgent. A Massachusetts farmer, Shays rose through the ranks of the Continental army from 1775 to 1780. He was promoted to sergeant in recognition of his bravery at Bunker Hill in 1775, and in 1779 he was commissioned a captain in the Continental army. In 1777 he received a ceremonial sword from the Marquis de Lafayette in recognition of his valor at Saratoga. In 1780 Shays left the army and returned to his struggling farm in western Massachusetts. He soon became a leader of the movement among farmers seeking redress of their grievances during economic hard times caused by deflation, hard currency shortages, and lack of credit. In 1786 fighting broke out between Shays's followers and the local militia after the farmers tried to block the local courts from sitting and demanded tax and debt relief. The militia put down the insurgency by the disorganized farmers with ease; many were captured and the others sent to their homes. After the failure of Shays's Rebellion to win any relief for the farmers, Shays hid in Vermont and later moved to New York, where he continued to farm.

Morgan, Daniel (c. 1735–1802), Revolutionary War general and Federalist Party leader.The son of Welsh farmers, Morgan grew up along the Pennsylvania–New Jersey border before settling in the Virginia backcountry in the 1750s. A teamster with the Braddock expedition, he then became a provincial ranger. Later he fought the Shawnee in Lord Dunmore's War. Given to brawling and drinking, he settled down, taking a common‐law wife and fathering two daughters.

At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Morgan received command of a rifle company raised by the Continental Congress and performed heroically in Benedict Arnold's ill‐fated Québec expedition. An authority on guerrilla tactics, Morgan commanded a ranger regiment that helped defeat Gen. John Burgoyne in the Battles of Saratoga (1777). After serving under George Washington in the Middle States in 1778–79, Morgan transferred to the American Southern Army. In January 1781, at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina, his forces destroyed Banastre Tarleton's Tory Legion; Morgan's double envelopment was the tactical masterpiece of the war. Becoming ill, he returned home, but not before providing Gen. Nathanael Greene with a useful battle plan against Cornwallis at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse (1781).

After the war, Morgan headed part of the militia army that put down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794–95; he served a single term (1797–99) as a Federalist in the House of Representatives.
[See also Braddock's Defeat; Revolutionary War: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

Don Higginbotham , Daniel Morgan: Revolutionary Rifleman, 1961.

Don Higginbotham