They Say 2: Bacon's Rebellion

In recent discussions of Bacon's Rebellion, a controversial issue has been whether Bacon and his followers had proper justification and means for rebellion against the richer whites and the Native Americans or was it unnecessary. On one hand, some writers take the side of Bacon and his followers, for example Zinn and Stefoff, in A Younger People's History of the United States, who portray Bacon as a hero. This piece combined all the information given in all the other articles [The Wikipedia document, the Declaration of the People, etc.] and then some. From this perspective, "It was not a war of American colonist against the British. Instead, Bacon's Rebellion was an uprising of angry, poor colonists against two groups they saw as their enemies. One was the Indians. The other was the colonists' own rich and privileged leaders." [35] "By the 1760s rich landowners controlled most of eastern Virginia. As a result, many ordinary people felt that they were pushed toward the frontier. Life was more dangerous there. The settlers had problems with the Native Americans. They wanted the colony's leaders to fight the Indians, but the politicians and big landowners who ran the colony wouldn't fight- maybe because they were using some of the Indians spies and allies against the others." [36] This made the frontiers men were angry because they felt like the colonial government had let them down. Many Virginians were unhappy because of terrible conditions they had as servants or the state of living in poverty. So, "Om 1676, these unhappy Virginians found a leader in Nathaniel Bacon." [37] According to Howard Zinn and Rebecca Stefoff, "Bacon owned a good bit of land. He probably cared more about fighting Indians than about helping the poor." Even with the fact, they felt as if Bacon was on their side, so they elected him into the House of Burgesses, which was the colonial government. Following the election, Bacon was ready to take matters into his own hands, as it says, "Bacon was ready to send armed militias, or armed grouped of citizens, to fight the Indians. These militias would act outside the government control. This alarmed William Berkeley, the governor of the colony. Berkeley called Bacon a rebel and had him captured." Berkeley later had him [Bacon] released after two thousand of Bacon's supporters had marched into Jamestown, but right when he was free, he began raiding the Indians and set Jamestown, their capital, on fire. "The rebellion was under way." Bacon gave his reason for the rebellion in a paper called "Declaration of the People," in which showed the frontiersman's hatred of the Indians and the common people's anger toward the rich, and Bacon's accusations of Sir William Berkeley, Sir Henry Chichley, William Claiburne Junior, Lieut. Coll. Christopher Wormeley, Thomas Hawkins, William Sherwood, Phillip Ludwell, along with all the others listed on the document, as to their wrong doings with unfair taxes, non-protection of the western farmers from the Indians, going against the King, etc. A few months following, Bacon got sick and died. Then an armed ship came to restore order. They killed many servants and then the remaining, they captured, sent back to their masters, and they punished them [thirty lashes with a whip], causing these servants to be in almost a worst shape they before the rebellion. There was basically a systematic ladder with England controlling the new American colony, and the new American colony controlling the Natives. For this reason, most people in Virginia supported the rebellion and one member of Berkeley's council even said that the rebels wanted to take the colony out of the King's hands and into their own. Although another said that, "the Indian problem was the original cause of Bacon's Rebellion, but the poor people had joined because they wanted to seize and share the wealth of the rich. Many of the poor settlers were mislead. The came to America with the promise of the good lives they would have in American and the possibility of becoming very wealthy, but it that wasn't the case. According to this piece, "Many poor people bound for America became indentured servants. They signed an agreement called an indenture that said that they would repay the cost of their journey to America by working for a master for five or seven years. Often they were imprisoned after signing the indenture, so that they couldn't run away before their ship sailed. Also, the sailing conditions weren't good at all. A musician, by the name of Gottlieb Mittelberger wrote about the terrible trip says, "During the journey the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress-smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, various kinds of sea-sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot.... Add to that shortage of food, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, fear, misery, vexation, and lamentation as well as other troubles.... On board our ship, on a day on which we had a great storm, a women about to give birth and unable to deliver under the circumstances, was pushed through one of the portholes into the sea...." [41] One thing to keep in mind about this is that the trip took eight to twelve weeks, possibly longer, with a few varying factors. Then, once they got to American these servants were being treated inhumanely and sold as though they were livestock or something along those lines. Plus, there was a constant reality of the saying, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." Due to the wealthy being in fear of the Indian hostility. the danger of slave revolts, and the growing class anger of poor whites, they [the wealthy] tried to turn all the others against each other; the poor against the Indians, the blacks against the the Indians, and blacks and white against each other [racism]. Everything developed over time in this same pattern with the divided social and racial classes, these that still exist today. In synapses, Bacon's Rebellion impacted history so much so, that it lead to future rebellions.