Nathaniel Bacon
To add to the uncertainty of life in Virginia, Indian troubles
flared up again. In and around the main settlements the white man
was safe enough from savage attack. But it was not so on the edge of
the English world, where the white hue ran thin, where small
clusters of folk and even single families built cabins of logs and
made lonely clearings in the wilderness.
Not far from where now rises Washington the Susquehannocks had taken
possession of an old fort. These Indians, once in league with the
Iroquois but now quarreling violently with that confederacy, had
been defeated and were in a mood of undiscriminating bitterness and
vengeance. They began to waylay and butcher white men and women and
children. In self protection Maryland and Virginia organized in
common an expedition against the Indian stronghold. In the deep
woods beyond the Potomac, red men and white came to a parley. The
Susquehannocks sent envoys. There was wrong on both sides. A dispute
arose. The white men, waxing angry, slew the envoys -- an evil deed
which their own color in Maryland and in Virginia reprehended and
repudiated. But the harm was done. From the Potomac to the James
Indians listened to Indian eloquence, reciting the evils that from
the first the white man had brought. Then the Native American, in
increasing numbers, fell upon the outlying settlements of the
pioneers.
In Virginia there soon arose a popular clamor for effective action.
Call out the militia of every county! March against the Indians!
Act! But the Governor was old, of an ill temper now, and most
suspicious of popular gatherings for any purpose whatsoever. He
temporized, delayed, refused all appeals until the Assembly should
meet.
Dislike of Berkeley and his ways and a growing sense of injury and
oppression began to quiver hard in the Virginian frame. The King was
no longer popular, nor Sir William Berkeley, nor were the most of
the Council, nor many of the burgesses of that Long Assembly. There
arose a loud demand for a new election and for changes in public
policy.
Where a part of Richmond now stands, there stretched at that time a
tract of fields and hills and a clear winding creek, held by a young
planter named Nathaniel Bacon, an Englishman of that family which
produced "the wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind." The planter
himself lived farther down the river. But he had at this place an
overseer and some indentured laborers. This Nathaniel Bacon was a
newcomer in Virginia -- young man who had been entered in Gray's
Inn, who had traveled, who was rumored to have run through much of
his own estate. He had a cousin, also named Nathaniel Bacon, who had
come fifteen years earlier to Virginia "a very rich, politic man and
childless," and whose representations had perhaps drawn the younger
Bacon to Virginia. At any rate he was here, and at the age of
twenty-eight the owner of much land and the possessor of a seat in
the Council. But, though he sat in the Council, he was hardly of the
mind of the Governor and those who supported him.
It was in the spring of 1676 that there began a series of Indian
attacks directed against the plantations and the outlying cabins of
the region above the Falls of the Far West. Among the victims were
men of Bacon's plantation, for his overseer and several of his
servants were slain. The news of this massacre of his men set their
young master afire. Even a less hideous tale might have done it, for
he was of a bold and ardent nature.
Riding up the forest tracks, a company of planters from the
threatened neighborhood gathered together. "Let us make a troop and
take fire and sword among them!" There lacked a commander. "Mr.
Bacon, you command!" Very good; and Mr. Bacon, who is a born orator,
made a speech dealing with the "grievances of the times." Very good
indeed; but still there lacked the Governor's commission. "Send a
swift messenger to Jamestown for it!"
The messenger went and returned. No commission. Mr. Bacon had made
an unpleasant impression upon Sir William Berkeley. This young man,
the Governor said, was "popularly inclined" -- had "a constitution
not consistent with" all that Berkeley stood for. Bacon and his
neighbors listened with bent brows to their envoy's report. Murmurs
began and deepened. "Shall we stand idly here considering
formalities, while the redskins murder?" Commission or no
commission, they would march; and in the end, march they did -- a
considerable troop -- to the up-river country, with the tall, young,
eloquent man at their head.
News reached the Governor at Jamestown that they were marching. In a
tight-lipped rage he issued a proclamation and sent it after them.
They and their leader were acting illegally, usurping military
powers that belonged elsewhere! Let them disband, disperse to their
dwellings, or beware action of the rightful powers! Troubled in
mind, some disbanded and dispersed, but threescore at least would by
no means do so. Nor would the young man "of precipitate disposition"
who headed the troop. He rode on into the forest after the Indians,
and the others followed him. Here were the Falls of the Far West,
and here on a hill the Indians had a "fort." This the Virginia
planters attacked. The hills above the James echoed to the sound of
the small, desperate fray. In the end the red men were routed. Some
were slain; some were taken prisoner; others escaped into the deep
woods stretching westward.
In the meantime another force of horsemen had been gathered. It was
headed by Berkeley and was addressed to the pursuit and apprehension
of Nathaniel Bacon, who had thus defied authority. But before
Berkeley could move far, fire broke out around him. The grievances
of the people were many and just, and not without a family
resemblance to those that precipitated the Revolution a hundred
years later. Not Bacon alone, but many others who were in despair of
any good under their present masters were ready for heroic measures.
Berkeley found himself ringed about by a genuine popular revolt. He
therefore lacked the time now to pursue Nathaniel Bacon, but spurred
back to Jamestown there to deal as best he might with dangerous
affairs. At Jamestown, willy-nilly, the old Governor was forced to
promise reforms. The Long Assembly should be dissolved and a new
Assembly, more conformable to the wishes of the people, should come
into being ready to consider all their troubles. So writs went out;
and there presently followed a hot and turbulent election, in which
that "restricted franchise" of the Long Assembly was often defied
and in part set aside. Men without property presented themselves,
gave their voices, and were counted. Bacon, who had by now achieved
an immense popularity, was chosen burgess for Henricus County.
In the June weather Bacon sailed down to Jamestown, with a number of
those who had backed him in that assumption of power to raise troops
and go against the Indians. When he came to Jamestown it was to find
the high sheriff waiting for him by the Governor's orders. He was
put under arrest. Hot discussion followed. But the people were for
the moment in the ascendant, and Bacon should not be sacrificed. A
compromise was reached. Bacon was technically guilty of "unlawful,
mutinous and rebellious practises." If, on his knees before
Governor, Council, and Burgesses, he would acknowledge as much and
promise henceforth to be his Majesty's obedient servant, he and
those implicated with him should be pardoned. He himself might be
readmitted to the Council, and all in Virginia should be as it had
been. He should even have the commission he had acted without to go
and fight against the Indians.
Bacon thereupon made his submission upon his knees, promising that
henceforth he would "demean himself dutifully, faithfully, and
peaceably." Formally forgiven, he was restored to his place in the
Virginia Council. An eyewitness reports that presently he saw "Mr.
Bacon on his quondam seat with the Governor and Council, which
seemed a marvellous indulgence to one whom he had so lately
proscribed as a rebel." The Assembly of 1676 was of a different
temper and opinion from that of the Long Assembly. It was an
insurgent body, composed to a large degree of mere freemen and small
planters, with a few of the richer, more influential sort who
nevertheless queried that old divine right of rule. Berkeley thought
that he had good reason to doubt this Assembly's intentions, once it
gave itself rein. He directs it therefore to confine its attention
to Indian troubles. It did, indeed, legislate on Indian affairs by
passing an elaborate act for the prosecution of the war. An army of
a thousand white men was to be raised. Bacon was to be
commander-in-chief. All manner of precautions were to be taken. But
this matter disposed of, the Assembly thereupon turned to "the
redressing several grievances the country was then labouring under;
and motions were made for inspecting the public revenues, the
collectors' accounts," and so forth. The Governor thundered; friends
of the old order obstructed; but the Assembly went on its way,
reforming here and reforming there. It even went so far as to repeal
the preceding Assembly's legislation regarding the franchise. All
white males who are freemen were now privileged to vote, "together
with the freeholders and housekeepers."
A certain member wanted some detail of procedure retained because it
was customary. "Tis true it has been customary," answered another,
"but if we have any bad customs amongst us, we are come here to mend
'em!" "Whereupon," says the contemporary narrator, "the house was
set in a laughter." But after so considerable an amount of mending
there threatened a standstill. What was to come next? Could men go
further -- as they had gone further in England not so many years
ago? Reform had come to an apparent impasse. While it thus
hesitated, the old party gained in life.
Bacon, now petitioning for his promised commission against the
Indians, seems to have reached the conclusion that the Governor
might promise but meant not to perform, and not only so, but that in
Jamestown his very life was in danger. He had "intimation that the
Governor's generosity in pardoning him and restoring him to his
place in the Council were no other than previous wheedles to amuse
him."
In Jamestown lived one whom a chronicler paints for us as
"thoughtful Mr. Lawrence." This gentleman was an Oxford scholar,
noted for "wit, learning, and sobriety . . . nicely honest, affable,
and without blemish in his conversation and dealings." Thus friends
declared, though foes said of him quite other things. At any rate,
having emigrated to Virginia and married there, he had presently
acquired, because of a lawsuit over land in which he held himself to
be unjustly and shabbily treated through influences of the Governor,
an inveterate prejudice against that ruler. He calls him in short
"an old, treacherous villain." Lawrence and his wife, not being
rich, kept a tavern at Jamestown, and there Bacon lodged, probably
having been thrown with Lawrence before this. Persons are found who
hold that Lawrence was the brain, Bacon the arm, of the discontent
in Virginia. There was also Mr. William Drummond, who will be met
with in the account of Carolina. He was a "sober Scotch gentleman of
good repute" -- but no more than Lawrence on good terms with the
Governor of Virginia.
On a morning in June, when the Assembly met, it was observed that
Nathaniel Bacon was not in his place in the Council -- nor was he to
be found in the building, nor even in Jamestown itself, though
Berkeley had Lawrence's inn searched for him. He had left the town
-- gone up the river in his sloop to his plantation at Curles Neck
"to visit his wife, who, as she informed him, was indisposed." In
truth it appears that Bacon had gone for the purpose of gathering
together some six hundred up-river men. Or perhaps they themselves
had come together and, needing a leader, had turned naturally to the
man who was under the frown of an unpopular Governor and all the
Governor's supporters in Virginia. At any rate Bacon was presently
seen at the head of no inconsiderable army for a colony of less than
fifty thousand souls. Those with him were only up-river men; but he
must have known that he could gather besides from every part of the
country. Given some initial success, he might even set all Virginia
ablaze. Down the river he marched, he and his six hundred, and in
the summer heat entered Jamestown and drew up before the Capitol.
The space in front of this building was packed with the Jamestown
folk and with the six hundred. Bacon, a guard behind him, advanced
to the central door, to find William Berkeley standing there shaking
with rage. The old royalist has courage. He tears open his silken
vest and fine shirt and faces the young man who, though trained in
the law of the realm, is now filling that law with a hundred wounds.
He raises a passionate voice. "Here! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair
mark -- a fair mark! Shoot!"
Bacon will not shoot him, but will have that promised commission to
go against the Indians. Those behind him lift and shake their guns.
"We will have it! We will have it!" Governor and Council retire to
consider the demand. If Berkeley is passionate and at times violent,
so is Bacon in his own way, for an eye-witness has to say that "he
displayed outrageous postures of his head, arms, body and legs,
often tossing his hand from his sword to his hat," and that outside
the door he had cried: "Damn my blood! I'll kill Governor, Council,
Assembly and all, and then I'll sheathe my sword in my own heart's
blood!" He is no dour, determined, unwordy revolutionist like the
Scotch Drummond, nor still and subtle like "the thoughtful Mr.
Lawrence." He is young and hot, a man of oratory and outward acts.
Yet is he a patriot and intelligent upon broad public needs. When
presently he makes a speech to the excited Assembly, it has for
subject-matter "preserving our lives from the Indians, inspecting
the public revenues, the exorbitant taxes, and redressing the
grievances and calamities of that deplorable country." It has quite
the ring of young men's speeches in British colonies a century
later!
The Governor and his party gave in perforce. Bacon got his
commission and an Act of Indemnity for all chance political
offenses. General and Commander-in-chief against the Indians -- so
was he styled. Moreover, the Burgesses, with an alarmed thought
toward England, drew up an explanatory memorial for Charles II's
perusal. This paper journeyed forth upon the first ship to sail, but
it had for traveling companion a letter secretly sent from the
Governor to the King. The two communications were painted in
opposite colors. "I have," says Berkeley, "for above thirty years
governed the most flourishing country the sun ever shone over, but
am now encompassed with rebellion like waters."
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