On September 19, 1676, three hundred and fifty years ago today, Nathaniel Bacon and his followers burned Jamestown, the capital of the Virginia Colony.
asserted
Bacon → burn → Colony
Fears of another such uprising in the future led Virginia lawmakers to make sure poor men would not make common cause, passing laws to divide them along racial lines.
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men → lead → lines
The crisis had begun a year before, in the fall of 1675, when Thomas Mathew refused to pay members of the Doeg tribe what they believed they were owed for goods they had sold him.
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they → begin → him
They raided his farm on the northern neck of Virginia, taking some of his pigs.
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They → raid → pigs
A number of Doegs were killed in the skirmish.
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number → kill → skirmish
The Virginia militia retaliated for the raid but mistakenly fell on a village of Susquehannocks, who were actually allied with the Virginia government.
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who → retaliate → government
Blindsided and furious, the Susquehannocks began to raid local farms.
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Susquehannocks → begin → farms
The raids set a smoldering power struggle within the colony ablaze.
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raids → set → colony
Since the colony’s beginning in 1607, both English custom and the drive to produce cash crops had created a clear line between men who had land and power and those who worked for them.
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who → produce → them
Horrific death rates made those men who had paid for the passage of workers from England to North America drive them hard to get as much labor out of them as possible before they died.
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they → make → them
After the arrival of Africans to the colony in 1619, those enslaved people joined indentured white workers to make common cause against their “masters.”
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people → enslave → masters
They worked and socialized together and, according to advertisements and court cases, ran away, committed crimes, and had children together.
uncertain
They → work → children
They also suffered similar punishments when they ran afoul of the law.
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they → suffer → law
And those few who lived past the deadly early years of their servitude shared similar access to the benefits of freedom, although slaves could not simply outlive their contracts but had to buy their way out of bondage with money they earned in their spare time.
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they → live → time
At first, so many poor Virginians died in the colony that the few who survived posed little threat to their former masters.
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who → die → masters
But by the 1660s, the survivors had grown into a large population of poor men, white and Black both, who were free but could not afford prime land in the eastern part of the colony, so they migrated to the western frontier hoping to become farmers.
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they → grow → frontier
There, these settlers thoroughly resented the eastern government that seemed to ignore their interests.
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that → resent → interests
In 1675 they saw the increased fighting with the local tribes as an opportunity to weaken those tribes and take their lands.
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they → see → lands
But Governor Berkeley disagreed.
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Berkeley → disagree → ?
He wanted to avoid an expensive war and he wanted to honor a 1646 treaty under which allied tribes paid an annual tribute to the colonial government and fought alongside the English against tribes that didn’t have such an agreement.
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that → want → agreement
Nathaniel Bacon had arrived in the colony in 1674.
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Bacon → arrive → 1674
He was well connected and wealthy—he was actually related to Berkeley by marriage—but
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he → connect → marriage
was frustrated that Berkeley wasn’t following his advice
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Berkeley → frustrate → advice
Bacon began to speak for the angry westerners and by spring 1676 had welded them into a powerful coalition that was attacking local Indigenous tribes without the government’s blessing.
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that → begin → blessing
Finally, Berkeley declared Bacon a rebel.
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Bacon → declare → ?
Under Bacon, vagrants and poor farmers, including former slaves and servants, went to war against the Pamunkey tribe and the Indigenous tribes who lived around them.
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who → include → them
And then they marched on Jamestown.
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they → march → Jamestown
On July 30, 1676, Bacon issued the Declaration of the People of Virginia, complaining that the governor had raised taxes too high, was corrupt, had put his own “ignorant” judges in place, and had failed to protect settlers against Indigenous Americans.
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governor → issue → Americans
He included a list of Berkeley supporters he called “Confederates, aiders, and assisters” of Berkeley’s perfidy.
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he → include → perfidy
Bacon ordered them all to surrender to him within four days and declared that he and his men intended to confiscate their estates.
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he → order → estates
In a dramatic affront to the colonial system in which leaders held their positions by virtue of the Crown, Bacon signed his name “Nathaniel Bacon, Generall by Consent of the people.”
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Bacon → hold → people
Bacon’s men held control of Jamestown from July through September before Berkeley’s forces forced them to retreat.
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forces → hold → them
Berkeley’s men abandoned the town when Bacon’s men tried to recapture it.
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men → abandon → it
Aware that more of the governor’s men were on their way, Bacon’s forces burned the town down on September 19.
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forces → burn → September
On October 26, Bacon died from dysentery, the “Bloodie Flux,” and the rebellion fell apart.
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rebellion → die → dysentery
But the crisis had left the colony in ruin with its people dead or wounded, farms plundered or burned, crops ruined from lack of care.
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crops → leave → care
In the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion, Virginia’s wealthy elite set out to preserve their control over the colony.
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elite → set → colony
They pushed Indigenous Americans off their land and enslaved those who fought back.
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who → push → those
From 1670 to 1715, colonists enslaved between 30,000 and 50,000 Indians.
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colonists → enslave → Indians
Entire tribes disappeared, and white farmers moved onto their lands.
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farmers → disappear → lands
…and 20 more, not listed.
The Aporia
