Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon Led

Bacon's Rebellion In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt against the colonial government of Virginia because of ongoing hostilities with the local Native Americans (Frantz, 1969, p. v). The origins of the rebellion dated back some seven decades according to Michael Olberg (Wiseman, 2005, p. 1-10), with the establishment of Jamestown in 1607. During this period, the Virginia colony cycled through booms and busts economically, but inevitably at the expense of the local Native American tribes.

The Natives would occasionally fight back by massacring hundreds of settlers, but by 1644 the English had subdued the local tribes. The colony began to thrive and by 1660 the population had reached 25,000 (Wiseman, 2005, p. 5-10). The inevitable result was increased pressure on settlers to buy or steal land occupied by the local Natives. The Virginia assembly in 1662 sought to maintain peace by codifying an outright prohibition against this practice and any vigilante actions against Indians.

With Dutch raiders destroying tobacco ships and a tobacco glut in Europe driving the price down, the colony was undergoing an economic crisis aggravated by war taxes. The Rebellion A squabble in July 1675 over stolen livestock was the spark that triggered the rebellion (Wiseman, 2005, p. 12-14). From the perspective of the Doegs and the Susquehanok, they were cheated by a dishonorable settler by the name of Thomas Matthew, so they stole a few hogs from him. Matthew responded by killing several Doegs.

The Doegs and Susquehanok then killed several of Matthew's servants and his son. The escalation that followed involved the local militia killing over a dozen Doegs and Susquehanok, then the Virginia militia laying siege to a Susquehanok fort. When several Susquehanok tribal leaders were executed during a parley, they dispatched a killing party. One of those killed was the overseer of Nathaniel Bacon's plantation. Berkeley, the Virginia governor, decided enough blood had been spilled and ordered the militia to return to the settlement.

The governor's decision to cease hostilities against the Natives was viewed by the settlers as a betrayal (Wiseman, 2005, p. 15-17). The combination of high taxes, no land, and no protection created conditions favorable for a revolt, but Bacon was an unlikely leader of the rebellion, because he had ample land well within the protection of the settlement and was a member of the ruling elite. In May, 1676, Bacon appealed to the governor of Virginia for a commission to fight the Indians and was refused (Wiseman, 2005, p. 16-18).

When Bacon was not deterred, the governor declared him a rebel on May 10. The governor dissolved the Virginia assembly the next day to force new elections, but in the meantime, Bacon orchestrated a land grab by force against the vulnerable Pamunkeys and through deceit and violence against the Occaneechees. Both these tribes had been friendly towards the English. On June 5, Bacons supporters filled the new assembly and when Bacon tried to sneak in, was arrested.

However, with nearly 2,000 well-armed Bacon supporters in town for the assembly, the governor had him released and restored to his seat in the assembly by June 10. The new assembly was thoroughly pro-Bacon and quickly legalized an all-out war against the Indians (Wiseman, 2005, p. 18-22). They also gave freemen the right to vote, thus limiting the influence of property holders in government affairs.

Control of the colony changed hands several times, during which Bacon gave the struggling poor a voice in his "Declaration of the People" in July 1676 that was anti-elite and anti-Indian. By the time the King sent reinforcements in January 1677 to suppress the rebellion, Bacon had died several months previous and hostilities had ceased. Discussion The significance of the Bacon Rebellion differs depending on the historian being asked. Some see the rebellion as the first volley in the American Revolution (Wiseman, 2005, p. 22-23).

Others viewed it as anti-Indian, or the inevitable result of trying to impose European society, with its strict class structure, into a frontier setting. Still others suggest the clues of its nature were evident in Bacon's anti-elite, anti-Indian manifesto, which appealed to the lower classes. Given that the success of the Virginia Colony depended on a large population of indentured White servants and Negro slaves, it should not be.