Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 Part 1

Bacon's Rebellion, 1676.

by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker.

The months just preceding the year 1676 were marked in Virginia by ominous signs of disaster. A great comet streamed through the sky "like a horsetail," and it was well known that that meant pestilence or war. Then came tens of thousands of pigeons, stretching across the sky as far as the eye could see. They were followed by vast swarms of what seem to have been cicadas, which rose out of the ground, ate the fresh leaves of the trees, and then disappeared. So those who believed in omens were not surprised when the year was marked by the greatest catastrophe in the history of the colony.

But to understand what happened it is necessary to go back thirty-five years to the appointment by Charles I of Sir William Berkeley as Governor of Virginia. No doubt the King considered this an especial act of grace to the colony, for Berkeley was a member of the Privy Chamber, and as such lived in the royal palace. It was this, perhaps, which fired him with an intense loyalty for the House of Stuart which endured to the day of his death. To dispute the omnipotence of the king was in his eyes the darkest of crimes. A Master of Arts at Oxford, a writer of some merit, polished in manner, he seemed out of place in the forests of Virginia. Perhaps it was his pa.s.sion to rule which brought him to the colony, perhaps it was cupidity, for he acc.u.mulated there a fortune of considerable size.

He had been in Virginia but a few months when word reached him of the outbreak of the Civil War in England. He must have been horrified that anyone should dare to take up arms against the sacred person of the King, and he sought permission to return to England to defend him. So, in the summer of 1644, when Charles was bearing down on the Parliamentary forces under Ess.e.x in Cornwall, Berkeley was with him.

And he looked on with deep satisfaction as Sir Richard Grenville ransacked Lord Roberts' house at Lanhydrock, eight miles north of Fowey, and made off with silver plate worth 2000.

It was probably soon after this that word came of the terrible Indian ma.s.sacre of April 18, 1644, for Berkeley was back in Virginia on June 7, 1645. Placing himself at the head of the forces which had been bringing fire and destruction to the Indian villages, he soon forced the savages to seek refuge in the woods and swamps. After he had captured their aged chief Opechancanough, they sued for peace.

Upon receiving news of the execution of Charles I, Sir William proclaimed Charles II King. And when, in 1652, a Parliamentary fleet sailed up the James to reduce the colony, he summoned the militia and prepared for a stubborn resistance. It was only when his Council pointed out the folly of defying the might of Britain that he reluctantly agreed to surrender. But his soul was filled with bitterness. So, with the restoration of Charles II to the throne, when once more he was governor of Virginia, he was determined to permit no more of representative government than his commission and instructions made necessary.

This he did by corrupting the Burgesses and continuing them by prorogations for many years. He took on himself "the sole nominating"

of all civil and military officers, picking out such persons as he thought would further his designs. Collectors', sheriffs', justices'

places were handed out to the Burgesses with a lavish hand. The list of Burgesses in the so-called Long a.s.sembly sounds like a military roll call, for of the thirty members in 1666, six were colonels of militia, two lieutenant-colonels, one a major, and fourteen captains.

Philip Alexander Bruce states that "a large proportion of the justices were also members of the House of Burgesses." In this way he "gained upon and obliged" the "men of parts and estates" in the Burgesses, and made them subservient to his will. "He has so fortified his power over us as of himself without respect to our laws to do what so ever he pleased," it was said.

Sir William further bound his favorites to him by granting them great tracts of the best land. "Some take up 2,000 acres, some 3,000, and others 10,000, and many more have taken up 30,000." They cultivated only a fraction or perhaps not any of these great tracts, merely putting up "a hog house to save the lapse." So when newcomers looked around for land, they were faced with the alternative of becoming tenants or of taking up "remote barren lands" on the frontiers.

The poor planters complained bitterly of the great sums voted by the a.s.sembly for their own salaries, those of certain officers, and for various other expenses. In 1675 the Speaker of the House received 15,000 pounds of tobacco, the clerk 15,000. The total cost of this session was 539,390 pounds of tobacco, that of the session of February, 1676, 616,652 pounds. When the salary of collectors was added the total was 1,601,046 pounds, or perhaps an average of 150 pounds for every family.

The people were convinced that the heavy taxes served no other purpose than to enrich Berkeley's favorites. "Consider their sudden advancement," said Bacon. "See what sponges have sucked up the public wealth, and whether it hath not been privately contrived away by unworthy favorites, by vile juggling parasites, whose tottering fortunes have been repaired and supported." And it was obvious that Berkeley himself had taken care to get the largest share of the plunder. At the outbreak of Bacon's Rebellion he owned the plantation at Green Spring, five houses in Jamestown, four hundred cattle, several hundred sheep, sixty horses, "near 1,000 worth of wheat, barley, oates, and corn," and some valuable plate.

Part of this fortune came to him through a monopoly of the beaver trade with the Indians. He seems to have cashed in on this by licensing the traders on the frontier and taking a large part of their profits. Though he had trouble in collecting his dues, he received each year several hundred pounds of beaver fur. His obedient a.s.sembly added to his wealth by voting him money from time to time.

This they excused to the indigent tax payers as due him for what he had laid out in "beneficial designs." But the poor planter, in his rags, leaning on his hoe in his little tobacco patch, secretly cursed as Lady Berkeley drove past in her coach.

The people complained bitterly that they had been cheated of the right to govern themselves. That no power whatsoever should tax them without their own consent was the basic principle of English liberty. Yet it was but a mockery to contend that men who had sold themselves to the governor and whom they were given no opportunity to oust from office, were their true representatives in voting away their money.

In local government Sir William was supreme. He it was who appointed the sheriffs and the justices of the peace who, as members of the county courts, had judicial, legislative, and executive powers. The county tax was usually larger than that laid by the a.s.sembly, for it had to cover the salaries of the Burgesses, the cost of building courthouses, prisons, and bridges, and of killing wolves, etc. When the justices in levying taxes retired to a private room and locked the door, there was grave suspicion of fraud. Is it not obvious, men said, that they do not tell us what the taxes are for, because part of the money they put in their own pockets?

Much of the money wrung from the taxpayers was squandered upon foolish projects. In 1662, at the advice of the King, the a.s.sembly voted to build thirty-two brick houses at Jamestown, and levied thirty pounds of tobacco per poll to pay for them. Since the mere erection of houses when there was no need for them could not make a town, this experiment was an utter failure. The houses were never "habitable, but fell down before the finishing of them."

Equally futile was the attempt to turn the people from raising tobacco to the production of manufactured goods. After the expenditure of large sums on industrial plants, "for want of care the said houses were never finished ... and the ... manufactury wholly in a short time neglected and no good effected." Bacon's rebellious men denounced Berkeley's parasites "for having upon specious pretences of public works raised great unjust taxes upon the commonalty for the advancement of private favorites and other sinister ends, but no visible effects in any measure adequate."

Berkeley denied the charges of favoritism and misgovernment. He called on G.o.d to witness that he knew of nothing in which he had not distributed equal justice to all men. His friends rallied to his support. "The whole are sensible of his great integrity, constant care, and diligence," the Council wrote to the Lords of Trade. Bacon had loaded him with all the base calumnies and scandals, and with as much malice and ingrat.i.tude as all the black devils in h.e.l.l could tempt him to. It was hard indeed that so good a governor should have his honor and reputation "ravished away" in his old age.

Though we may discount the testimony of those who had been partners with Berkeley in his misgovernment, it is clear that he was in no way responsible for the chief cause of poverty in the colony--the Navigation Acts. Prior to 1660 the Virginians carried on an extensive trade with Holland, selling their tobacco to Dutch merchants and taking Dutch manufactured goods in exchange. When the tobacco reached Holland it was "manufactured" and then distributed to other countries.

This trade brought prosperity to the colony, for the Dutch paid well for the tobacco and sold their goods cheaply. But the Navigation Acts required that tobacco exported from the colonies must be shipped to England or to her dominions, and that manufactured goods imported must come from England.

The result was disastrous. England was not able by herself to consume the entire crop. Nor could the merchants re-export it to the continent because they did not have access to the markets. So the tobacco piled up in the English warehouses, while the price sank lower and lower.

The Dutch had given three pence a pound for tobacco, but now the crop was sold at half a penny a pound. Formerly the poor planter who raised a thousand pounds of tobacco each year could count on an income of 12, which was ample for his needs. After the pa.s.sage of the Navigation Acts he was fortunate if he made forty-five shillings. This was so little that Secretary Ludwell attributed it to nothing but the mercy of G.o.d that he had "not fallen into mutiny and confusion." In 1662 Berkeley and others complained that the price of tobacco was so low that it would not bear the charge of freight and customs, give encouragement to the merchants, and subsistence to the planters.

As though this were not enough, a series of disasters struck the colony bringing ruin and suffering in their wake. In 1667, when England and Holland were at war, a fleet of five Dutch warships entered Chesapeake Bay and captured the _Elizabeth_, an English frigate of forty-six guns. They then turned on the tobacco fleet and captured twenty vessels. Six years later nine Dutch warships came in and engaged the English in a desperate battle off Lynnhaven Bay while the tobacco ships scurried for shallow water. Unfortunately nine or ten ran aground and were taken.

Even nature seemed bent on completing the ruin of the planters. "This poor country ... is now reduced to a very miserable condition by a continual course of misfortune," wrote Thomas Ludwell in 1667. "In April ... we had a most prodigious storm of hail, many of them as big as turkey eggs, which destroyed most of our young mast and cattle. On the fifth of June following came the Dutch upon us.... They were not gone before it fell to raining and continued for forty days together.... But on the 27th of August followed the most dreadful hurricane that ever the colony groaned under.... The nearest computation is at least 10,000 houses blown down, all the Indian grain laid flat upon the ground, all the tobacco in the fields torn to pieces."

It was soon after the Restoration that the people of Virginia learned that "all the lands and water lying between Potomac and Rappahannock, together with all the royalties belonging thereto," had been granted to Lord Hopton and several other n.o.blemen. In alarm they appealed "for relief" to the King, and were greatly relieved when the grant was recalled. And though another patent was issued, it contained reservations to protect "the rights, privileges, and properties of the inhabitants." But their joy was tempered by a provision giving the patentees the quit rents with eleven years arrears. This would be more than the entire value of many men's estates, it was complained.

So they employed agents to plead their cause in London. In the meanwhile the patent had been a.s.signed to the Earl of St. Albans, Lord John Berkeley, Sir William Moreton, and John Trethney. When the agents proposed that they surrender their rights in return for a large sum of money to be raised by taxing the people of the colony, most of them agreed. But at this point the King issued a patent to the Earl of Arlington and Lord Culpeper, "which not only included the lands formerly granted ... but all the rest of the colony." The Virginians were in despair. The two lords were to have many powers rightly belonging to the government. They were to pocket all escheats, quit rents, and duties belonging to the Crown; they had the power to create new counties and parishes, to issue patents for land; they could appoint sheriffs, surveyors, and other officers, and induct ministers.

The a.s.sembly complained that this nullified all previous charters and promises and made the people subjects to their fellow subjects.

So negotiations had to begin again. In the end Arlington and Culpeper agreed to give up their patent in return for a new one for the Northern Neck a.s.suring them the quit rents and escheated property.

Having gained this concession the agents then pleaded for a charter for the colony guaranteeing the liberties of the colonists. In it there were to be promises that they should continue to have their immediate dependence on the Crown, and that no tax should be laid upon them but by the consent of the a.s.sembly. The King in Council a.s.sented to the charter, and twice it reached the Great Seal. But there it was held up. In the meanwhile news came of Bacon's Rebellion, and the King reversed his order. Later he did grant letters patent, but they contained little more than the promise that the colony should be directly dependent on the Crown.

This whole affair caused universal resentment in the colony, and the expense of the negotiations in England made the people "desperately uneasy." Berkeley reported that "the two great taxes of sixty pounds per poll to buy in the Northern patent made those that thought they were not concerned in it ripe for mutiny." The agents, too, warned that the Arlington and Culpeper grant might cause the common people to rise in arms and perhaps bring about "the utter dispersion" of the planters.

With the staple crop of the colony a drug on the market because of the Navigation Acts, with tax piled on tax to buy back the liberties of the people from favorites of the King, with self-government made a mockery by the corrupting of the Burgesses, with the small farmers in rags, the people were ready to rise in arms at the least excuse.

Before young Nathaniel Bacon set foot on Virginia soil Berkeley and his henchmen were trembling in their boots. The governor thought that if an opportunity offered itself the planters might go over to the Dutch "in hopes of bettering their condition by sharing the plunder of the country with them."

Into this ma.s.s of dynamite an Indian war threw a torch. The resulting explosion was Bacon's Rebellion.

In 1674 two mutinies had failed, it was said because the people, after a.s.sembling in arms, could not find a leader. Two years later, when again angry men gathered, they found their leader in Bacon. This young man was the son of Thomas Bacon, a wealthy English squire. At an early age he entered St. Catherine's Hall, Cambridge, as a fellow-commoner. There he seems to have idled away his time, and when he "broke into some extravagances" his father withdrew him. This apparent misfortune was turned to good effect when his father secured for him as tutor the great naturalist, John Ray. Ray found Nathaniel a lad of "very good parts and a quick wit," but "impatient of labor."

When he was sixteen he accompanied Ray on a tour of Europe. On his return he re-entered Cambridge and later studied at Gray's Inn.

In 1670 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward Duke. Her father had positively forbidden the match, and when she disobeyed him cut her off without one groat. But Thomas Bacon, and after Sir Edward's death, her brother John, made ample provision for the young couple. All would have been well had not Nathaniel been tricked by two sharpers in a deal with a guileless youth named Jason, and left with a long and tedious lawsuit.

It was at this juncture that he decided to seek his fortune in Virginia. There he might hope for quick advancement, because his cousin, also named Nathaniel Bacon, had attained a position of influence, and because he was related to Lady Berkeley, wife of the governor. Upon the advice of his grandmother, Lady Brooke, he left his wife behind until he had prepared a place for her "answerable to her quality." Upon his arrival in Virginia he was welcomed by Sir William, and it was at his advice "or at least friendly approbation" that he purchased a plantation at Curles Neck, on the James, forty miles above Jamestown, and a tract of land at the site of Richmond, on what was then the frontier. "When first I designed Virginia my chiefest aims were a further inquiry into those western parts in order to which I chose to seat myself so remote," he said, "I having always been delighted in solitude."

Bacon had been in Virginia but a few months when the governor appointed him to the Council of State. This seemed a great honor indeed for a young man of twenty-eight. But Berkeley explained: "Gentlemen of your quality come very rarely into this country, and therefore when they do come are used by me with all respect." Bacon was greatly surprised. "As to anything of public employment in the country, my tender age and manner of living, not free from follies and youthful excesses, forbad me to hope or expect any such thing.... This sudden change were enough to stagger a philosopher of more settled temper than I am."

But it was not possible for the dictatorial governor and the hotheaded youth to get along together. Berkeley was accustomed to having obedience in return for favors. Bacon was not the man to knuckle under. It was prophetic of what was to follow that the first difference grew out of relations with the allied Indians. When poor immigrants took up holdings on the frontier rather than become tenants to wealthy men in the east, they encroached on the reservations of those Indian tribes which were under the protection of the government.

They even laid out farms within the very limits of their villages.

When the Indians, driven by hunger, killed any of their cattle or hogs, the frontiersmen "beat and abused them."

Apparently it was a dispute with the Indians which caused the first temporary breach between Bacon and Berkeley. We do not know just what happened, but Bacon in a letter to the Governor speaks of his "unbecoming deportment in your Honor's presence," and said he was sorry for it. Sir William's reply makes it probable that Bacon had suffered some losses from neighboring Indians, and had retaliated.

"This sudden business of the Indians," Berkeley said, had raised in him "high distemper." And he asked Bacon to consider that relations between the whites and the Indians was his responsibility, so that it was important that he be advised of all dealings with them. Should there be serious trouble he would be criticised both in England and Virginia.

Bacon must have resented Berkeley's monopoly of the fur trade. He tells us that a desire to have a share in this lucrative business had been one of his motives for settling on the frontier. But he made a virtue of necessity and, in partnership with his neighbor, William Byrd I, applied to the governor for a license. They would pay him 800 pounds of beaver fur for the first year and 600 pounds a year thereafter. This looked good to Sir William. "I am in no such plentiful condition that I should refuse a good offer," he replied, "and therefore am likely to accept your and my cousin Byrd's offer."

With the opening months of 1676 there were ominous rumblings of revolt. From New England came word that the English there were engaged in a deadly war with the Indians, which Berkeley thought was not merely a local affair, "but a general combination of all from New England thither." The so-called allied tribes on the Virginia frontiers were sullen and resentful. "They also would be rid of us if they could," said Berkeley. Their efforts to wipe out the English in previous wars had failed only because their bows and arrows were no match for the muskets of the English. Now that they had firearms might not their efforts be more successful?

It was the Marylanders who had given firearms to the Susquehannocks, a fierce tribe living on their northern border. This they did so that they could protect them from the Senecas, one of the tribes of the Iroquois confederation. But in 1674, when the Marylanders made a separate treaty with the Senecas, the latter fell on the Susquehannocks, defeated them in battle, and swept them out of their fortified villages. Fleeing through Maryland the remnant of the tribe established themselves on the north bank of the Potomac directly across from the site of Mount Vernon.

Here they were safe from their enemies, but not from hunger. They might catch fish from the river, but they lacked s.p.a.ce for corn fields, and the plantations of the English spread out over what had once been hunting grounds. It was inevitable that they would seek food where they could find it, and having robbed nearby farms they could not resist the temptation to commit a few murders. a.s.sociated with them were the remnants of the Doegs who had been driven out of Virginia a few years before because of the "execrable murders" they had committed.

In the summer of 1675 a party of Indians paddled across the Potomac, and after killing several men, made good their escape back to Maryland. Shortly afterwards people returning from church found a man covered with ghastly wounds lying across his threshold, who managed to gasp out, "Doegs, Doegs." Immediately the alarm was sounded, and a party of thirty or more men a.s.sembled on the south bank of the river opposite the Indian reservation under the command of Colonel George Mason and Captain George Brent.

At dawn they crossed over to the Maryland side. Here they divided their forces, Mason leading part in one direction through the woods and Brent the other in another. Brent came upon a cabin full of Doegs.

Their chief denied knowledge of the murders, but when he started to run Brent shot him. At this the Indians in the cabin made a dash for safety in the face of a volley which brought down ten of them.

In the meanwhile Mason, too, had come upon a cabin full of Indians, and had killed fourteen of them. But when he found out that they were not Doegs but Susquehannocks, he shouted: "For the Lord's sake shoot no more, these are our friends the Susquehannocks." But they now were their friends no longer. They began a series of b.l.o.o.d.y raids in Stafford County on the Virginia side of the river and Charles County in Maryland. Governor Calvert was quite right in complaining to Berkeley of the invasion of his province by an armed force to turn friendly Indians into mortal enemies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Courtesy Cook Collection, Valentine Museum. From Frank Leslie's Ill.u.s.trated Newspaper, Sept. 6, 1866 Bacon's Castle, Surry County, Virginia]