Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion (1676). Nathaniel Bacon arrived in Virginia in 1674 with money for land and impeccable connections to the colony's elite. Two years later he died of swamp fever, the leader of a rebel army made up of former indentured servants. Bacon's transformation from gentleman planter to rebel ringleader united two potent animosities in colonial Virginia: the colonists' hatred of Indians and small freeholders' hatred of land‐monopolizing gentry.

Smallholders on Virginia's frontier had long‐running disputes with the Susquehannocks north of the James River and with the colony's elite. The sources of the free men's anger converged in 1676 when Governor William Berkeley, fearing the outbreak of Indian war, discountenanced Bacon's plans to lead a frontier army against the Indians and refused him a commission. Bacon planned to exterminate the Indians in the colony, and attack those beyond its border; Berkeley reasonably insisted on distinguishing between friendly and hostile Indians. In June, Bacon and five hundred men traveled to Jamestown to confront Berkeley. The governor eventually granted the commission and authorized Bacon to raise an army; Berkeley then fled Jamestown and sent to England for troops.

While Bacon's followers sought out Indians to enslave or massacre, Berkeley and Bacon waged a recruiting war, vying for the loyalty of servants and small landowners. In October, Bacon died and his rebellion fizzled. British troops arriving in 1677 confronted a puny rebel force: eighty slaves and twenty servants.

A class brawl within an Indian conflict, Bacon's Rebellion revealed the mixed motivations and tangled outcomes of warfare in colonial America. The revolt changed little within the colony; gentlemen continued to monopolize the best land, the highest offices, and the most slaves. The Indians suffered the most. Those within the colony lost population and land; the Susquehannocks to the north were decimated by Iroquois warriors, who seized the opportunity to attack. By the 1680s, the Susquehannocks existed only as Iroquois dependents, and the Iroquois were free to sell their lands to colonial planters.
[See also Colonial Rebellions and Armed Civil Unrest; Native American Wars: Wars Between Native Americans and Europeans and Euro‐Americans.]

Bibliography

Wilcomb E. Washburn , The Governor and the Rebel, 1957.
Edmund S. Morgan , American Slavery, American Freedom, 1975.

Jon T. Coleman