The armed men, perhaps a hundred or more, showed up while the legislature was in session. Their leader, a charismatic fellow described as being in “every way qualified to lead a giddy and unthinkable multitude,” lined his men up around the building and issued his demands — which basically amounted to a call for genocide of Virginia’s Native American population. He promised “fire and sword” if the government did not give him the war he wanted.
The governor was not cowed. He rushed out of the building to confront the agitator. The governor denounced him as a rebel, a traitor — serious words in an age when those crimes were capital offenses. Then the governor ripped open his shirt to bare his chest and dared the leader of the armed men to make good on his threats. “Here, shoot me, for God, fair mark, shoot!” In case that wasn’t an option, the governor drew his sword, prepared to fight right then and there.
From the windows of the government building, legislators looked down in awe — and fear. The armed men outside the legislature were too organized to be called a mob; they were essentially an unauthorized army. And their leader wasn’t backing down, no matter how much the governor tried to scare him off. He ordered his men to train their guns at the legislators looking out the windows.
One of the legislators pulled out a white handkerchief and waved it. At that point, the government of Virginia surrendered to an armed uprising — and a bloodthirsty crowd that wanted to kill every Native American it could find.
This year marks the 250th anniversary of American independence and the uplifting words of the Declaration of Independence. This year also marks the 350th anniversary of a less-celebrated event, one that was much darker in tone: a two-year spasm of violence in 1676-1677 known as Bacon’s Rebellion after its polarizing leader, Nathaniel Bacon.
Bacon’s Rebellion was complicated then and controversial still. Some historians see it as a lower-class revolt, led by a well-connected member of the gentry. A century after the fact, Thomas Jefferson saw Bacon’s Rebellion as a precursor to the American Revolution — a cry for liberty against a high-handed governor who historian Virginius Dabney once wrote “had established a virtual dictatorship in Virginia.” Bacon’s Rebellion was undoubtedly a popular call to wipe out Virginia’s indigenous peoples. For all his faults, the governor, Sir William Berkeley, pursued a policy of peace and trade with Virginia’s tribes. Bacon and his followers wanted none of that namby-pamby policy of detente. “Our design,” Bacon declared, is “to ruin and extirpate all Indians in General.” Today we’d call that ethnic cleansing; 350 years ago, Bacon rallied Virginians to this message, chased the governor out of the capital, burned Jamestown and then set about his bloodthirsty rampage, halted only by his unexpected death due to disease. In the aftermath, the governor returned to the ruined capital and started hanging people.
My seventh-grade history textbook took a generous view of Bacon, hailing him as a “patriot” who dared “to protect the rights of the people against tyranny.” To this day, there’s a plaque in the House of Delegates that remembers Bacon as “a great Patriot Leader of the Virginia People who died while defending their rights October 26, 1676.” A closer reading of history might cause us to wonder just why we’re honoring someone who tried to commit genocide. Was murdering indigenous people really a right? However we view Bacon’s Rebellion, one thing is certain: This convulsion of violence was an important marker in Virginia history.
Tobacco’s boom and bust cycles led to civil war
To understand Bacon’s Rebellion, we must first understand two things: the price of tobacco and the lethality of the axe that took off King Charles I’s head.
Tobacco first: The 1650s saw a boom in the tobacco market. Virginia farmers rushed to plant more of the golden leaf. That meant they needed to clear more land. Immigrants drawn by the tobacco trade swelled the colony’s population. The state’s indigenous tribes, who weren’t exactly reconciled to the English colonists in the first place, regarded the land-clearing as a particularly offensive act and definitely did not like seeing an influx of new arrivals. At the same time, Virginia farmers had started planting other crops as well. Until now, there had been a precarious peace between the natives and the settlers based on trade — the settlers had depended on natives for food and furs. Now the colonists didn’t need those things so much. Both sides came to regard the other as less of a trading partner and more of an impediment to their view of what Virginia should be. Tensions grew.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, tensions of a different sort were growing in England. The result was the English Civil War, and King Charles I being led out to a scaffold where a hooded executioner cleaved off his head in a single stroke. This was horrifying to the governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley. He owed his appointment to the now-beheaded king and refused to recognize the new government led by Oliver Cromwell. Berkeley welcomed royalist refugees to Virginia. This is where the nickname “Old Dominion” and the team name Cavaliers at the University of Virginia come from; Virginia remained loyal to the ousted Stuart family, whose soldiers were known as cavaliers.
Berkeley was eventually fired as governor by the new Cromwell government, but later restored once Charles II regained the throne. The relevance here is that Berkeley held many of the autocratic views that led to the uprising against Charles I. He had little regard for public opinion. There were no public schools then, nor would there be. Berkeley opposed education, fearing it would lead to “disobedience.” He also opposed the notion of a free press for the same reason. He refused to call for elections for 14 years. He doled out large land grants to his friends; they then proceeded to charge rent to the small farmers who cleared their land. To the large landowners, this seemed quite natural; to the smaller farmers, these fees seemed excessive. Berkeley and his friends amassed great wealth, in stark contrast to the people he governed. Class resentment began to fester. If this calls to mind certain situations today, it’s because Mark Twain was right: History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it does rhyme.
Then the tobacco market crashed, as markets sometimes do. Suddenly there were lots of Virginians in economic straits who also couldn’t vote because they didn’t own land, so they had no effective way to vent their anger. Then Berkeley made a spectacularly bad decision, one of many: He appointed his wife’s nephew to the governor’s council, just months after he arrived in Virginia.
That nephew’s name was Nathaniel Bacon, and he was everything that Berkeley was not. He was young (28 the year he was appointed; Berkeley was 70). Where Berkeley believed in a government run by the Virginia gentry, or perhaps even himself alone, Bacon was known for his “powerful elocution” that made him popular with the lower classes. The two soon found themselves on a collision course.
Bacon had left behind a scandal in England: He’d married a woman in defiance of her father’s wishes and then allegedly cheated another man out of some money. Bacon’s father apparently found it wise to offer his son a handsome sum to leave the country. Bacon used that money to buy land in Henrico County, which was then the frontier — and where he soon found himself a participant in an even bigger controversy.
There had long been what historian Virginius Dabney called “spasmodic conflicts” between the settlers pushing west and the indigenous tribes. Bacon arrived just as those conflicts were sparking up again. In the first half of 1676, about 500 Virginia colonists were slain, and panic was setting in. Berkeley had long prided himself on maintaining reasonably good relations with Native Americans. That doesn’t necessarily mean he had much regard for the Native Americans. A decade earlier, he suggested that an expedition to exterminate them in modern-day Northern Virginia might be a good thing because it would serve as “great Terror and Example and Instruction to all other Indians.” Plus, he said, such an expedition could be financed by enslaving native women and children and selling them. Berkeley’s idea of good relations was simply to keep Native Americans away from settlements because war was expensive.
When confronted with this new outbreak of violence, Berkeley’s response was a defensive one: to set up a series of forts. The popular mood among colonists was to go to war. Berkeley’s popularity, never high to begin with, sank further. “Thus the stage was set for the emergence of a strong leader to take matters into his own hands and to organize an expedition,” Dabney writes. That strong leader was Bacon.
Bacon — with no official authority from the governor — organized a force that went as far west as modern-day Clarksville, where the Occaneechees had a “fortified village.” The Occaneechees were thought to be a friendly tribe, and maybe they were. Bacon went to negotiate for food; when a shot killed one of his men, “he stormed the village, set it on fire and slaughtered more than a hundred” people, “including the chief and many women and children.”
Berkeley was furious, charging Bacon with treason and rebellion. The general public, though, regarded Bacon as a hero. Then Berkeley made another mistake: He finally called for an election. The people of Henrico County promptly elected Bacon to the House of Burgesses. The governor had Bacon arrested and brought to Jamestown. Hundreds of Bacon supporters “poured into the capital with a view to rescuing their leader,” Dabney writes.
The governor had Bacon brought before the House. “Now I behold the greatest rebel that ever was in Virginia!” Berkeley declared. Bacon profusely apologized — this may have all been an act. The governor forgave Bacon, reinstated him to the council and offered him a commission to fight the Native Americans. That may have been yet another mistake; not following through with that promise was definitely another. Bacon decided that since Berkeley had reneged on the commission, his previous promises to obey the governor didn’t apply either. He went home, organized a military force, and marched on Jamestown to confront the governor and the legislature.
“I came for a commission against the heathen who daily and inhumanely murder us and spill our brethrens blood and no care is taken to prevent it,” Bacon declared. “God damn my blood, I came for a commission and a commission I will have before I go!”
That’s the governor who dared Bacon to shoot him. That bravado did not last long.
At gunpoint, Berkeley gave Bacon a commission and issued pardons to Bacon’s men. The legislature, cowed by Bacon’s rebellion, also passed a series of laws known as “Bacon’s Laws.” This is where Jefferson and later Virginians came to see Bacon not as a genocidal rebel, but a champion of democracy, or what passed for democracy in those days. Bacon’s Laws extended the right to vote beyond landowners to all free white men. It expanded the power of elected officials and limited the power of the crown-appointed governor. Elected officials were banned from holding more than one office at a time, which had previously been the practice. Members of the governor’s council were no longer exempted from taxes. These were heady and progressive actions for the mid-17th century.
Bacon took his commission and went off with 1,300 men in search of the Native Americans he despised. Once he was gone, Berkeley “suddenly denounced them as traitors and rebels and made it known that he was raising an army to subdue them.” Bacon turned around and decided to fight the governor instead. A civil war seemed at hand. Berkeley went to Gloucester and Middlesex counties to raise the militia. Instead, “the militiamen walked from the field,” Dabney writes, because they identified more with Bacon than Berkeley. The governor fled to the Eastern Shore.
“Bacon’s men were now in possession of the mainland, but they were in a deadly confrontation with an aroused governor,” Dabney writes. “A conflict with the king also appeared in the offing, which greatly disturbed some of Bacon’s supporters.” A century before the Declaration of Independence, Virginians were still royalists. By now, Bacon had lost sight of his original goal of fighting Native Americans and was more focused on fighting the governor.
Bacon set up camp in what we now call Williamsburg, but then was called Middle Plantation, and started issuing proclamations. Seventy of the colony’s leading planters swore allegiance to Bacon. For those who didn’t, Bacon’s men looted their property, and Bacon branded them traitors. Bacon sent some men to the Eastern Shore to find the governor, but they didn’t come back. Berkeley’s men captured them, and five of them were soon swinging from makeshift gallows.
Berkeley regrouped and returned to Jamestown. Bacon laid siege. Realizing he was outnumbered, Bacon resorted to using human shields. “Wives of leading Berkeley supporters were kidnapped on nearby plantations by Bacon’s mounted raiders and put in front of the rebel trenches,” Dabney writes. Somehow that part didn’t make it into my seventh-grade history textbook, or onto the plaque that hangs in the House of Delegates. Berkeley also began to realize that many of the men he’d recruited were more sympathetic to Bacon than they were to him. The governor fled again to the Eastern Shore. This time Bacon decided the best thing to do was to burn Virginia’s capital to the ground.
“His men ran from building to building with burning brands, torching numerous homes as well as the statehouse complex, warehouses, taverns, and even the church,” Encyclopedia Virginia says. “Berkeley and the loyalist refugees, anchored just downstream, watched the glow of the flames.”
Bacon moved on to find some Native Americans to kill. He didn’t, but his men found estates they could plunder. Then Bacon fell ill with dysentery in Gloucester County and died on Oct. 26, 1676. He was buried in an unmarked grave for fear that Berkeley would have his body dug up and mutilated.
Bacon’s death did not end the fighting. On the contrary, it continued, but Berkeley’s side gained the advantage in time. “The vengeful old governor hunted down various leaders of the rebel faction and hanged them,” Dabney writes. One of those captured was William Drummond, who had been governor of North Carolina at one point. When Drummond was captured in the Chickahominy Swamp and brought before Berkeley, the governor of Virginia bowed. “Mr. Drummond, you are very welcome! I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in half an hour!” When Maj. Thomas Cheeseman was captured, his wife “begged on her knees to be hanged in his place.” Berkeley dismissed her request and called her a “whore.”
In all, Berkeley hanged 23 men. It’s said that King Charles II remarked: “That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I did for the murder of my father.”
The aftermath
The king sent a commission to investigate. The inquiry did not go well for Berkeley. There were allegations that he had pocketed some of the plunder from the estates of Bacon’s men. The commissioners took a dim view of Berkeley’s enthusiasm for the noose. That view grew even dimmer when the commissioners went to visit Berkeley at his plantation to say farewell; Berkeley sent the hangman to be their driver. “Noticing that Lady Berkeley was watching through the window, presumably to judge their reactions, the men chose to walk the several miles to their landing on the James rather than endure the insult,” Encyclopedia Virginia says.
The commission recommended that Berkeley be replaced as governor. Berkeley set sail for London, determined to tell his side of the story to the king. He made it to London but died before he could ever get an audience.
Ever since then, the fighting over Bacon’s Rebellion has been left to historians. “From the American Revolution to the 1950s, the most common understanding of Bacon’s Rebellion was that it was a precursor of the American Revolution, a premature revolt against British tyranny that represented but a temporary setback for American liberty,” Encyclopedia Virginia says. “Since the 1950s, however, historians have soundly rejected this interpretation for the simple reason that there is no evidence to support it and much evidence to the contrary. Bacon himself worked hard at presenting his rebellion as being in the king’s interests, repeatedly representing it as an uprising against a corrupt governor and his followers, who were the real traitors against the Crown.”
The real losers of Bacon’s Rebellion were the Native Americans. They survived Bacon (most of them anyway) but not the governors that followed Berkeley. Those governors looked at Bacon’s Rebellion and concluded, as Alexander Spotswood later observed, “a Governor of Virginia has to steer between Scylla and Charybdis, either an Indian or a Civil War.”
If forced to choose, they preferred the former.
Want more history? We have it in our Cardinal 250 series about little-known aspects of Virginia’s role in American independence and our monthly Cardinal 250 newsletter that comes out next Tuesday. Want more contemporary politics? We have that, too, in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that comes out Friday afternoons. Sign up for them or any of our other newsletters here:
