Nathaniel Bacon

English-born American colonist and rebel

• Born: January 2, 1647
• Birthplace: Friston Hall, Suffolk, England
• Died: October 26, 1676
• Place of death: Gloucester County, Virginia

Nathaniel Bacon died while leading a rebellion against the royally appointed governor of Virginia. A century later, on the eve of the American Revolution, he became a symbol of resistance to tyranny.

Early Life

The eldest son of Thomas Bacon, Nathaniel Bacon was born on January 2, 1647, at Friston Hall, Suffolk, as the English Civil Wars were in their final phase. His father was a member of the cadet branch of the great Bacon family and a cousin of Francis Bacon, the lord chancellor of Elizabeth I.

At the age of thirteen, Nathaniel Bacon matriculated at Saint Catherine’s College, Cambridge, but in 1663, his father withdrew him from the university. Apparently, the young Bacon, a member of one of the leading Puritan families, had ignored his studies in favor of the temptations available to a young man with money. During the next three years, Bacon, accompanied by John Ray, a noted naturalist, and two of the former Cambridge tutor’s students, traveled extensively in Europe.

An attack of smallpox early in 1666 brought Bacon’s grand tour to an unexpected conclusion, and he came home to recuperate. He later returned to Cambridge, where he graduated at the age of twenty-one with bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees. He then entered the Inns of Court in London, reading law at Grey’s Inn to prepare himself for the place of leadership in Suffolk that was his birthright.

In 1673, he married Elizabeth Duke, daughter of Sir Edward Duke of Benhall, against her father’s will. The baronet disinherited Elizabeth for her disobedience, but Bacon’s troubles were just beginning. Out of either ignorance or indifference, he became involved in a plan to defraud a friend, and when the full details of the scheme became public, Bacon’s father, seeking to avoid another scandal, provided this volatile and often troublesome son with eighteen thousand pounds to permit him to assume the lifestyle of a gentleman in one of England’s American colonies.

Until his marriage to Elizabeth, Bacon’s experiences had been typical of his class; however, his life changed forever when he emigrated to Virginia in 1673. He settled at Curles in Henrico County, a plantation on the James River about 40 miles (64 kilometers) above Jamestown. Bacon should have had a brilliant future in Virginia; his cousin, Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., was auditor-general for the colony and a councillor. Almost immediately, the younger Bacon was granted a seat on the governing council through the influence of his kinsman.

Life’s Work

Sir William Berkeley, who had first been appointed governor of England’s oldest colony in the New World in 1642, had been removed a decade later by the Cromwellian government because of his loyalty to the Crown. With the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Berkeley was reappointed governor of the Old Dominion, the name the king had given the second domain to proclaim him monarch after the death of his father in January, 1649. Unfortunately, Berkeley’s second term would prove a disaster, in large part because of Nathaniel Bacon.

Berkeley had devoted his years in exile to recruiting settlers for Virginia, especially members of the disgruntled royalist faction who wished to escape the restrictive policies of the Cromwellian government. Royalist migration was at its height between 1647 and 1660. Many of these immigrants were the younger sons of prominent families from the south and west of England. These new settlers changed the character of Virginia as they sought to replicate a society based upon large estates with a dependent servant class. After 1660, the policy of the impecunious government of Charles II to make large grants of land in Virginia in lieu of money payments only sped up Virginia’s transformation. The vision of Berkeley and his associates, who were known as the Green Spring Faction, had no place for the small independent farmer or the indentured servant. These disgruntled and dispossessed farmers and servants formed the core of the group that Bacon would lead in open rebellion against the governor and his supporters.

In 1628, the price per pound of Virginia tobacco dropped from 24-36 pence to 2.5-3 pence, where it remained until the middle of the eighteenth century. This drop of approximately 90 percent destroyed the modest prosperity of a class of small farmers within a few years. Unable to pay the taxes levied by the Virginia government, many were forced to sell their holdings to Berkeley’s newly recruited gentry and seek positions as laborers on lands that had once been their own. These men might have recouped their losses if they had moved beyond the frontier, but this was forbidden by Berkeley. These lands were reserved by treaty for the American Indians, a policy that naturally was resented by the men whose fathers had first colonized Virginia. To make matters worse, in 1670, all freemen in Virginia who were neither householders nor landowners lost their right to vote. The colony of Virginia was therefore ripe for rebellion when Bacon arrived in the Old Dominion three years later.

The episodes that sparked Bacon’s Rebellion were of secondary importance until the government overreacted. In the summer of 1675, some members of the Doeg tribe sought restitution from a Stafford County planter who owed them money. When an American Indian killed a white settler in an unrelated incident, Governor Berkeley ordered the militia to pursue the miscreants, which resulted in the deaths of a number of Indians, including some innocent Susquehannocks. The settlers, however, still were not satisfied.

Six months later, the Susquehannocks took their revenge by slaughtering thirty-six settlers. They were now ready to make peace, and to the disgust of his subjects living on the frontier, Berkeley agreed. The governor then levied new taxes to build a new chain of defensive forts along the frontier, but it was too late for reconciliation. By April, 1676, the planters of Charles City County began to arm, and they chose Bacon to lead them in their campaign to exterminate every Indian they could find. Governor Berkeley forbade Bacon to accept their commission, but Bacon ignored him, and for this act of defiance, he was declared a rebel on May 10, 1676.

Bacon’s systematic slaughter of Indians, both friend and foe, earned him the adoration of his followers. He was elected to the House of Burgesses from Henrico County, and with an armed escort, he boldly sailed down the James River to assume his seat in the statehouse. To the surprise of friend and foe alike, Berkeley pardoned Bacon and promised him a military commission. Bacon did not trust the governor, however, and to force him to fulfill his promise, he marched on Jamestown with a force of four thousand. The governor was furious, but the terrified House of Burgesses granted the commission to “General” Bacon.

When Bacon sought more Indians to kill, Berkeley again declared him a rebel. However, the House of Burgesses was packed with Bacon’s supporters. They proceeded to pass a series of measures dubbed Bacon’s Laws. Although Bacon had nothing to do with their passage, these liberal measures sought to redress the balance between the small landholders and the “new” gentry while trying to correct many of the supposed abuses of Berkeley’s administration. When Berkeley finally regained control over Virginia, though, these laws were quickly repealed by his supporters. Bacon then issued his Manifesto and Declaration of the People on July 29 and turned the fury of his followers on the Pamunkey tribe. Meanwhile, Berkeley recaptured Jamestown, only to lose it to Bacon again on September 19, 1676. Bacon then burned the capital.

This act of senseless destruction caused a number of Bacon’s landed supporters to desert his cause. He then began actively to recruit both white and black indentured servants, to whom he promised freedom, but in so doing, he lost even more of his original adherents. The implications of Bacon’s “social revolution” were never realized. On October 26, 1676, he died of “a bloody flux,” or dysentery.

Governor Berkeley swiftly put an end to the rebellion by executing twenty-three of Bacon’s followers. A royal commission conducted an inquiry into the affair in 1677, placing the blame on Berkeley and recommending his removal as governor. It also urged the Crown to curb the power of the House of Burgesses, thus ending for a century the possibility of a more egalitarian Virginia. Troubled by Bacon’s appeal to the dispossessed, Virginia’s planter aristocracy opted for a system of labor based on black slavery and thus changed forever the social and economic character of the Old Dominion.

Significance

More potential demagogue than potential democrat, Bacon has nonetheless captured the imagination of those who consider him one of America’s first patriot heroes. Born into one of the most respected and distinguished families in seventeenth century England, Bacon enjoyed all of the privileges of his class while fulfilling few of its responsibilities. His reputation for extravagance and reckless behavior was so well known that his clandestine marriage caused his wife to lose her inheritance.

Sent to Virginia to avoid another scandal, Bacon found himself in the midst of a crisis, which in its social implications closely resembled that which had plunged England into civil war a generation earlier. Many colonists faced economic ruin as a result of the policies of a governor who had lost touch with his constituency and of market factors beyond their control. Bacon assumed the leadership of these colonists, challenged the establishment, and almost won. His untimely death abruptly ended the social revolution that he had just begun, but his activities earned him a secure place in America’s revolutionary pantheon. A century later, on the eve of the American Revolution, the legend of Bacon and his challenge to Sir William Berkeley inspired the founding fathers in their struggle against George III.

Bibliography

Andrews, Charles McLean. Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675-1690. 1943. Reprint. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967. The first 140 pages of this volume are devoted to seventeenth century colonial America, presenting the original sources dealing with Bacon’s Rebellion.

Billings, Warren M. The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1689. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975. Examines documentary evidence from the seventeenth century for every aspect of life in colonial Virginia, placing Bacon’s Rebellion in the context of the social transformation occurring after 1660.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. A biography of the governor who declared Bacon a rebel and crushed Bacon’s Rebellion.

Carson, Jane. Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676-1976. Jamestown, Va.: Jamestown Foundation, 1976. This slender volume not only presents a concise narrative of the events of 1676 but also deals in a critical manner with the sources, the histories, and the fictional narratives inspired by Nathaniel Bacon. The endnotes are valuable for further study.

Mouer, L. Daniel. “Digging a Rebel’s Homestead.” Archaeology 44, no. 4 (July/August, 1991): 54. Describes the causes of Bacon’s Rebellion and the rebellion’s implications for archaeology.

“Three Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago.” American Heritage 52, no. 3 (May, 2001): 96. Focuses on Governor William Berkeley’s attempts to proclaim Bacon a rebel and quash Bacon’s Rebellion.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion. 1957. Reprint. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972. In this study, the roles are reversed: Bacon becomes an opportunist who exploited the gullible and the trusting in a bid for power that ended with his death, and Berkeley assumes the position of hero. Whether Sir William was Virginia’s best colonial governor is debatable, but this work does provide an alternative to the usual treatment of the rebellion and those involved in it.

Webb, Stephen Saunders. 1676: The End of American Independence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984. Reprint. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995. The author sees Bacon’s Rebellion as one of the pivotal events in the evolution of American democracy. The revolt’s failure sets in motion forces that make the rebellion of the colonies a century later inevitable. This view of the event is both new and controversial.

Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1957. Reprint. Baltimore: Genealogical, 1998. Wertenbaker begins his story with Governor Berkeley’s return to Virginia in 1659, then recounts the events and political intrigues that led to the rebellion seven years later.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Torchbearer of the Revolution: The Story of Bacon’s Rebellion and Its Leader. 1940. Reprint. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965. In the absence of a modern treatment of Bacon’s life, this slender work from another generation remains the standard. The narrative is well written and easily read, although the author’s acceptance of Bacon as a precursor of American democracy is rather dated.