Letters from an American - Bacon’s Rebellion

Starting point is 00:00:06 September 19th, 26. On September 19th, 1676, 350 years ago today, Nathaniel Bacon and his followers burned Jamestown, the capital of the Virginia colony. The destruction of the seat of government was the culmination of a year of conflict between Governor Sir William Berkeley and poor settlers in the colony. Fears of another such uprising in the future led Virginia law, to make sure poor men would not make common cause, passing laws to divide them along racial lines. The crisis had begun a year before, in the fall of 1675, when Thomas Matthew refused to pay members of the Doag tribe what they believed they were owed for goods they had sold him. They raided his farm on the northern neck of Virginia, taking some of his pigs. A number of doegs were killed in the skirmish.

Starting point is 00:01:04 The Virginia militia retaliated for the raid, but mistakenly fell on a village of Susquehannics, who were actually allied with the Virginia government. Blindsided and furious, the Suswahanics began to raid local farms. The raids set a smoldering power struggle within the colony, ablaze. Since the colony's beginning in 1607, both English custom and the drive to produce cash crops had created a clear line between men who had land and power and those who worked for them. Horrific death rates made those men who had paid for the passage of workers from England to North America, drive them hard to get as much labor out of them as possible before they died.

Starting point is 00:01:51 After the arrival of Africans to the colony in 1619, those enslaved people joined indentured white workers to make common cause against their masters. They worked and socialized together, and according to advertisements in court cases, ran away, committed crimes, and had children together. They also suffered similar punishments when they ran afoul of the law. And those few who lived past the deadly early years of their servitude shared similar access to the benefits of freedom, although slaves could not simply outlive their contracts,

Starting point is 00:02:27 but had to buy their way out of bondage with money they had earned in their spare time. At first, so many poor Virginians died in the colony that the few who survived posed little threat to their former masters. But by the 1660s, the survivors had grown into a large population of poor men, white and black both, who were free but could not afford prime land in the eastern part of a colony. So they migrated to the western frontier, hoping to become farmers. There, these settlers thoroughly resented the eastern government that seemed to ignore their interests. In 1675, they saw the increased fighting with the local tribes as an opportunity to weaken those tribes and take their lands.

Starting point is 00:03:16 But Governor Berkeley disagreed. He wanted to avoid an expensive war, and he wanted to honor a 1646 treaty under which allied tribes paid an annual tribute to the colonial government, and fought alongside the English against tribes that didn't have such an agreement. Nathaniel Bacon had arrived in the colony in 1674. He was well-connected and wealthy. He was actually related to Berkeley by marriage, but was frustrated that Berkeley wasn't following his advice. Bacon began to speak for the angry Westerners, and by spring 1676 had welded them into a powerful coalition

Starting point is 00:03:55 that was attacking local indigenous tribes without the government's blessing. Finally, Berkeley declared Bacon a rebel. Under Bacon, vagrants and poor farmers, including former slaves and servants, went to war against the Pamunkey tribe and the indigenous tribes who lived around them. And then they marched on Jamestown. On July 30, 1676, Bacon issued the Declaration of the People of Virginia, Virginia, complaining that the governor had raised taxes too high, was corrupt, had put his own ignorant judges in place, and had failed to protect settlers against indigenous Americans.

Starting point is 00:04:37 He included a list of Berkeley supporters he called Confederates, aiders, and assisters of Berkeley's perfidy. Bacon ordered them all to surrender to him within four days and declared that he and his men intended to confiscate their estates. In a dramatic affront to the colonial system in which leaders held their positions by virtue of the crown, Bacon signed his name Nathaniel Bacon, General by consent of the people. Bacon's men held control of Jamestown from July through September before Berkeley's forces forced them to retreat. Berkeley's men abandoned the town when Bacon's men tried to recapture it. Aware that more of the governor's men were on their way, Bacon's forces burned the town down

Starting point is 00:05:28 on September 19th. On October 26th, Bacon died from dysentery, the bloody flux, and the rebellion fell apart. But the crisis had left the colony in ruin, with its people dead or wounded, farms plundered or burned, crops ruined from lack of care. In the wake of Bacon's rebellion, Virginia's wealthy elite set out to preserve their control over the colony. They pushed indigenous Americans off their land and enslaved those who fought back. From 1670 to 1715, colonists enslaved between 30,000 and 50,000 indigenous Americans. Entire tribes disappeared and white farmers moved onto their lands. And the elites set out to drive wedges between black slaves and white servants, establishing greater punishments for black Virginians. In 1705, the Virginia slave codes pulled all those

Starting point is 00:06:30 regulations together and went further. They prohibited black Americans from owning cattle, hogs, or horses. They made it legal to kill an enslaved Virginia in the process of correcting them. And they made enslavement hereditary. At the same time, they gave white servants new legal rights and limited the length of white indentures. The Assembly passed laws requiring masters to provide white servants with food and clothing as well as money to set themselves up after they earned their freedom.

Starting point is 00:07:05 This, combined with the booming tobacco market, enabled more white men to buy land. The Assembly also reduced the poll taxes for voting, making it easier for poor white men to vote. And they made it costly for white and black Virginians to socialize. Any white person attempting to marry across race lines would be fined and sent to jail, and the minister performing such a marriage would be fined the astonishing price of 10,000 pounds of tobacco. White servant women who had mixed-race children either had to pay a whopping fine or have

Starting point is 00:07:44 their term of service extended for five years. And the child will be a slave until they turned 31. As leaders bound black Americans more tightly into slavery, they courted white Virginians into joining the cultural and social world from which they had previously been excluded. Wealthier Virginians reached out to their less prosperous neighbors, rubbing elbows with poorer white men in taverns and welcoming them into their imposing homes to emphasize that they were all friends. Indeed, the needs of poor white landowners were not all that different from those. of wealthier planters, and it was easy to believe that all Virginia voters had the same interests.

Starting point is 00:08:28 They understood what it meant to be under the thumb of a tyrant, for they saw enslaved people and their enslavers all around them. They believed that owning land made a man independent, for that was their experience. And, unlike the royal officials who used their offices to enrich their friends, Virginia voters could argue that they had the best interests of the country at heart. They were free and independent. They were, one might say, created equal. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss. Thank you.

Letters from an American - Bacon’s Rebellion

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