Bacon's Rebellion
The New World's First Proletarian Revolt
A thousand men occupied Jamestown, Virginia on Sept. 19, 1676 and burned it to the ground. It was Nathaniel Bacon's final defeat of the governor, Sir William Berkeley, who would soon be recalled from his post by the British crown. In any case, he had been out of power since June, hiding on the Maryland side of Chesapeake Bay with his rich friends while Bacon's rebel army tore up the countryside, arresting the landowners, plundering their goods, and making war on the Susquahannah, Pamunkey and any other Indian they found. The event was a thorough rebuke of the 'Grandees' personal and political power, and a powerful though short-lived expression of the cherished American virtue of class equality. At the same time, it showed that English settlers intended to occupy Virginia unmolested by heathens, even if that meant killing every last Indian.
Bacon had assumed control of the colony in June by surrounding and then threatening the House of Burgesses with 500 men, "the scum of the country," according to William Sherwood, one of Berkeley's favored Grandees. The armed rabble exacted a long-sought commission from Berkeley authorizing a genocidal war on Indians, a war they had been fighting with no authorization for nearly three months already. The turning point came when Bacon went "under the window of the house,
Published by Crawdad Nelson
I'm a student, journalist, naturalist and forager. I've worked in a variety of occupations, from greenchain puller to small magazine editor, sometimes more than one at a time. View profile
- Slavery and FreedomWhen most people think of slavery, they think of the mindless cruelty inflicted on the African Americans all for the sake of the wealthy landowner's greed. Although this may have often been the case, there was another...
- James River PlantationsThe James River Plantation site includes information on Charles City County in Virginia.
- Slave Trade DynamicsDuring the course of early history in the Americas, the institution of slavery proliferated through much of the economical and social life of the British-influenced colonies and the Caribbean islands.
- The Widow Ranter and Sexual Non-ConformityAphra Behn attempts to justify sexual non-conformity while concurrently advocating for the restoration of English social norms.
Indentured Servitude and the Tobacco Industry in the Chesapeake ColoniesWhat role did the Chesapeake colonies play in supporting England in the 1600's? How did the link between England and her colonies preclude the American Revolution?
- The Lost Colony: Roanoke
- Faith or Fortune? New England and the Chesapeake Region
- Travel Narratives in Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville
- Evaluation of America Through the Eyes of Its People
- A Summary of the Book Jefferson's Pillow
- The Lost Colony of Roanoke: Can Americans Solve the Mystery of the Missing Colony?
- Best Advice for Visiting Virginia This Summer
- Bacon fervently believed that, for the colony to grow, nearby Indians would have to be eliminated en
- In August, he issued a writ commanding all "Men in the Land on Pain of Death to Join him,"
- A thousand men occupied Jamestown, Virginia on Sept. 19, 1676 and burned it to the ground.
Prior to Bacon's Rebellion, the majority of laborers on Virginia's tobacco plantations were white indentured servants. Within a few years afterward, the system of black African slavery was the dominant source of labor in the southern colonies