Bacon’s Rebellion: Still Relevant Today

Nathaniel Bacon arrived in Virginia with his wife and two children in 1674 with an impressive pedigree, significant social connections and good financial backing.  He seemed to be poised to become part of the new landed gentry growing in England’s largest colony in North America.  Bacon had a college degree and was married to the daughter of prominent English politician Sir Edward Duke.  His family provided £1,800 which Bacon used to buy 800 acres at Curles Neck, a well-known tract of rich agricultural land on the James River.*   Bacon was related to Virginia’s Royal Governor Sir William Berkeley and his wife and had a cousin on the Governor’s Council.  Instead, Bacon became known as a rabble rouser and a leader of small western Virginia landholders and indentured servants in leading the first challenge to royal authority in America.  However, real importance of Bacon’s Rebellion was not in the conflict itself but a series of consequences that fundamentally changed the nature of Virginia culture that still reverberates today.

When the first English colonists founded Jamestown, they encountered Chief Powhatan and his confederacy of Algonquin tribes along the Virginia and northern North Carolina coast.  Overall, Algonquin speaking Native Americans numbered between 30,000 and 50,000 divided into many tribes spread over a territory extending from Catawba lands in North Carolina and modern central Virginia to Iroquois lands in New York.  The colonists had an uneasy relationship with Powhatan early on even though the English needed trade to survive.  John Smith and John Rolfe managed to negotiate short term peace treaties that allowed the colony to take hold.

When Powhatan died in 1618, his successor Opechancanough (pronounced Opee-ko-canoo) decided to oust the English altogether.  In 1622, Indian warriors attacked every major white settlement and town killing at least 347 men, women and children.  Only a timely warning from a friendly Indian saved Jamestown which was ready when Opechancanough’s men arrived.  Nevertheless, the Great Massacre of 1622 reduced the English population by 33%-50%.

England in the early 1600s was overcrowded with multitudes of landless poor with few prospects.  In spite of the dangers, many came to Virginia as indentured servants.  They worked for seven years to pay for their passage and then received their own land to farm.  By the 1670s, Virginia’s population was growing steadily with a few large plantations had appeared in Eastern Virginia owned by a few landholders.  Former indentured servants had to move further and further west to receive smaller tracts of land.  At this time there were very few African slaves.

When Bacon arrived 30 years later, frontier Virginia was not what it is today.  In the 1670s, the western part of the colony was still within 100 miles of the coast.  Curles Neck was about 30 miles from Jamestown and 60 miles from the Chesapeake Bay.  Indians were also no longer essential to survival or a threat to the entire colony.  However, as colonists pushed west, they came into contact with Catawba speaking tribes and relations with a new set of Native Americans quickly became strained.  Smaller scale raids and reprisals on the frontier began occurring with increasing frequency.  By 1676, raiders came closer to Curles Neck and one of Bacon’s overseers was killed in a raid further inland.  Bacon rode to Jamestown in March of 1676 to demand Governor Berkeley allow him to lead militia in large scale reprisal raids to end the Indian threat on the frontier.  Berkeley refused and Bacon went ahead with leading a raid.

A power struggle ensued between Governor Berkeley and Bacon that escalated when Bacon and 500 men marched on Jamestown in June confronting the governor and delegates of the House of Burgesses at gunpoint.  The rebellion ended suddenly when Bacon succumbed to dysentery in October of 1676.  Governor Berkeley hung some of the leaders but he and the large eastern planters recognized the growing problem of western farmers and indentured servants.  Bacon had easily united both groups which the planters saw as a threat.  They began looking for an alternative to white indentured servants and settling on African slaves who would not have rights under English law and were bound to their masters for life, not seven years.

Thus, as a result of Bacon’s Rebellion, large Virginia planters began importing slaves from Africa.  The number of indentured servants was declining in the late 17^th century so Virginia planters may have turned to African slavery anyway but at the very least Bacon accelerated the process.  To be fair, Virginia planters should not shoulder the entire blame for the rise of slavery in America.  Slavery took root in South Carolina and other states independently of Virginia.  The invention of the Cotton Gin in 1792 generated a separate wave of demand for slave labor in the Deep South as well.

The institution of slavery has left deep scars on American culture that continue to reverberate even today.  The Civil War and Reconstruction in the 1860s-1870s, the Civil Rights movement of the last century, right down to protests during the National Anthem in last week’s NFL games are all unintended consequences of Bacon’s Rebellion and the decisions made in the aftermath.  It is worth remembering that seemingly minor events can have far larger consequences when learning about the past.

*Even to this day, Curles Neck Farm remains privately owned and actively engaged in growing crops.