Conceived in Liberty (20 page)

A dispute, however, arose over the plunder from the raid and especially over a half-dozen friendly Manikin and Annaleckton Indians who had been prisoners of the Susquehannocks and had helped the Occaneechees destroy the Susquehannock camp. The Occaneechees naturally wanted to keep the plunder from the Susquehannock raid, and to free the friendly Indians they had liberated. But Bacon demanded the plunder for himself and insisted that the Manikins and Annalecktons be turned over to him as slaves. Bacon fell into a dispute with the Occaneechee chief, who balked at selling food to his
men, whereupon Bacon launched a surprise attack on the Indians, burning and slaughtering over a hundred Indian men, women, and children, and kidnapping others. To Bacon went the plunder and, in addition, an Occaneechee stock of valuable beaver fur. Some contemporary accounts assert the fur was Bacon’s major aim in the surprise attack. In any case, Bacon returned from this irrelevant act of butchery as the leader of a band of heroes in the eyes of the bulk of the Virginia people, and insisted more than ever that all Indians were enemies: “this I have always said and do maintain.’ Undaunted by Berkeley’s denunciation of Bacon for treason and rebellion and his expulsion of Bacon from the Council, the freemen of Henrico County unanimously elected Bacon and his associate James Crews as burgesses. Joining the inner councils of Bacon’s Rebellion were two wealthy and influential Virginians: William Drummond, tobacco planter and former governor of Albemarle colony, and the intellectual Richard Lawrence, who had lost land through legal plunder to a favorite of Berkeley’s.

Ignoring the election results, Berkeley sent an armed force to capture Bacon and bring him back to Jamestown. Here ensued a patently spurious reconciliation scene, with Bacon in open assembly confessing his guilt and Berkeley, out of character, granting him forgiveness. Clearly an uneasy truce had resulted from the glowering confrontation of armed force and the threat of full-fledged civil war. For Berkeley knew that two thousand men were armed and ready to come to Bacon’s rescue. Berkeley also restored Bacon to his seat in the Council, perhaps to retire him to what at this point was a less important seat.

With Bacon quieted, the House of Burgesses, largely supporters of Bacon and certainly anti-Berkeley, did very little. A few feeble essays in reform were quickly stifled by the domineering governor. Except for acts restricting trade with the Indians, and imposing dictates on avowedly friendly Indians by forbidding them to hunt with guns even on their own reservations, the Assembly did little and certainly nothing against Berkeley. Indeed, they saw fit to eulogize Berkeley’s rule. Bacon, warned of a plot on his life and seeing how reconciliation had only succeeded in dangerously weakening the revolutionary movement, calming the people, and taming the Assembly, escaped from Jamestown. He still lacked official sanction to fight Indians.

Returning home, Bacon raised an armed troop and on June 23 invaded Jamestown, where, under bayonet, he forced Berkeley and the Assembly to grant him the commission to fight the Indians—the original point of the rebellion. But now the Baconian Assembly, emboldened by the Bacon victory, pushed through in a few days a series of reform measures that became known as “Bacon’s Laws.”

Several of these measures were invasive of liberty: the inevitable laws for more stringent war and regulation against the Indians, prohibition on the export of corn, restrictions on the sale of liquor. But the bulk of the laws were in a libertarian direction: requiring annual rotation of the powerful
office of sheriff; prohibiting anyone from holding two local offices at the same time; penalizing excessive charges levied by public officials; providing for triennial elections for the local vestry boards by the freemen of the parish (thus ending the closed oligarchical control of the vestries). Moreover the Assembly ended the absolute control of the appointed justices of the peace, meeting in secret conclave, over county taxes and expenditures. Annual election by all the freemen was provided, for choosing an equal number of representatives to sit with the judges imposing the county levies and expenditures. Furthermore, the law of 1670 taking the voting for burgesses away from nonlandholding freemen was repealed. Thus, a true revolution had developed from a mere movement to crush Indians more efficiently. Indeed, some leading conservatives hinted darkly of anarchy and menace to private property; one leading Berkeleyan sneered that Bacon’s followers were too poor to pay taxes and therefore wanted none levied at all. In the meanwhile, Bacon protested that revolution was farthest from his mind, as perhaps it was; that all he wanted was to fight the Indians. Armed with his coveted commission he proceeded west to do so.

Governor Berkeley, however, was not content with this relatively peaceful resolution of the problem, and he determined on civil war. Berkeley once more cried treason and rebellion against Bacon and proceeded into Gloucester County to raise a counterrevolutionary armed force. Hearing of this treachery, Bacon and his men marched eastward, where the militia of Gloucester County mutinied and to the governor’s face chanted, “Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!” Berkeley, in disgrace and opposed by the bulk of the people, fled to obscure Accomack County on the Eastern Shore, where he lamented: “How miserable that man is that governs a people....”

Bacon was now impelled by the logic of events to a radical and revolutionary position. For, despite his wishes, he was now irrevocably a rebel against Governor Berkeley; and since Berkeley was the agent of the king, a rebel against the king of England as well. The logic of events now compelled Bacon to favor total independence from England; for him it was now independence or death. So swiftly had the dynamic of revolution pushed events forward that the man who, just three months before, had had no thoughts of rebellion, who only a few weeks before had only wished to crush Indians more effectively, was now forced to fight for the independence of Virginia from the Crown.

Grievances were abounding in neighboring Maryland and Albemarle. Bacon began to envisage a mighty all-Chesapeake uprising—Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina—to gain freedom from subjection to England. The neighboring colonies were indeed ripe for rebellion, and William Drummond, a leading Baconian and former governor of North Carolina, helped stir up a rebel movement there led by John Culpeper, who visited Jamestown during the turbulent rebellion of 1676. But Bacon had a critical problem: if the choice was only independence or death for
him,
that choice did not face the rest of the Virginians. Thus, one of Bacon’s followers, on hearing him
talk of plans to fight English troops, exclaimed: “Sir, you speak as though you designed a total defection from His Majesty and our country!” “Why, have not many princes lost their dominions so?” Bacon calmly replied. Less chary of a radical policy was Sarah, wife of William Drummond, who, breaking a stick in two, exclaimed, “I care no more for the power of England than for this broken straw.”

Bacon now faced a twofold chore: the cementing of the Virginia people behind the new, difficult, and radical task; and the smashing of the Berkeley forces before they could rally. Unfortunately, it is not surprising that a man dedicated to a hard-line against the Indians would not hesitate in a hardline against his own people. Bacon began to wield the weapon of the compulsory public loyalty oath. From his headquarters at the Middle Plantation (later Williamsburg), Bacon issued a call for a convention of the leading men of the colony. Once at the convention, Bacon issued a manifesto, grandiosely entitled the “Declaration of the People,” demanding surrender of Berkeley and nineteen of his closest cohorts in four days. Refusal to surrender would mean arrest for treason and confiscation of property. In the Declaration, several accusations were leveled against Berkeley: (1) that “upon spacious pretense of public works [he] raised great unjust taxes upon the commonality;” (2) advancing favorites to high public offices; (3) monopolizing the beaver trade with the Indians; (4) being pro-Indian.

Bacon now assumed dictatorial authority over the colony. He forced the convention to subscribe to an oath of allegiance. The first clause caused no trouble—a pledge not to join Berkeley’s forces. The second part caused a great deal of trouble—a pledge to oppose any English forces sent to aid Berkeley. The Virginians balked at open revolution against the Crown. Bacon, however, locked the doors and forced the assembled men to take the entire oath. Bacon now proceeded to terrorize the mass of Virginians to take the same oath, and arrested any who refused. Terror is a poor way to persuade someone to be loyal, and from this moment Bacon’s formerly great popularity in the colony began to ebb.

At this juncture, when smashing Berkeley’s forces was the order of the day, Bacon permitted himself to be diverted to the old sport of killing Indians. Instead of pursuing the Indian war against the tribes actually fighting, Bacon again found it convenient to attack the hapless and neutral Pamunkey Indians, who had fled to the swamps and wilderness of Gloucester County to be left alone. After wasting many days trying to find the Pamunkeys in the swamps and, of course, plundering as they went, Bacon’s forces found the Pamunkeys’ camp and plundered, captured, and slaughtered the unresisting Indians. Bacon was a hero once more.

While Bacon was off to raid the Pamunkeys, Berkeley had seized the opportunity to win control of the fleet, Jamestown, and the principal river areas. In contrast to Bacon’s reliance upon volunteers for his army, Berkeley raised his counterrevolutionary force by the promise of plunder from the estates of those who had taken Bacon’s oath, and the promise of subsidy and exemption
from virtually all taxes. Each party was soon promising liberty to the servants of the opposing side.

Marching on Jamestown again, Bacon now drove Berkeley out of the capital. In the course of the battle, Bacon used a new stratagem: he kidnapped some of the wives of the Berkeley leaders and threatened to place them in the front line if the Berkeley forces fired upon their fortifications.

Power corrupts, and the repeated use of aggressive violence spirals inevitably upward and outward. So with Nathaniel Bacon, Jr. Beginning with the Indians, Bacon increasingly extended despotism and violence against Virginian citizens. After capturing Jamestown, Bacon burned it totally to the ground, on the flimsy excuse of hypothetical military necessity. The forces of Giles Brent, now a Colonel, in the northern counties, which had shifted from Bacon’s to Berkeley’s cause, were marching south, but Brent’s men deserted him completely when they heard of Bacon’s victory at Jamestown. After driving Berkeley’s forces back to the Eastern Shore, Bacon enforced his loyalty oath on more masses of people, seized provisions for his army from the populace, and punished several citizens by martial law. Even his cousin, Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., was not spared the plunder meted out to the leading opponents of the rebellion, even though the elder Bacon had previously warned his cousin of an attempt on his life. The elder Bacon’s property was looted to the loss of £1,000.

Just as Bacon made ready to proceed against Berkeley and the Eastern Shore, this leader of revolution fell ill and died on October 26, 1676. In a few short months he had brought Virginia and perhaps the neighboring colonies to the brink of revolutionary independence from Great Britain. Who knows what might have happened had Bacon lived? Without the inspiration provided by their leader, the rebellion fell apart and Berkeley’s forces conquered the disorganized rebel units. One of the last of the rebel bands to yield was a group of 400 Negro slaves and white servants, fighting for their freedom in Bacon’s army. Captain Thomas Grantham of the Berkeley forces persuaded them to disarm by promising them their freedom, after which he delivered them back to their masters.

Governor Berkeley was not a forgiving soul, and he now instituted a veritable reign of terror in Virginia. As he defeated each of the rebel units, he courtmartialed and hanged the leaders. Neither was Berkeley very discriminating in his court-martialing and hanging parties; in one of them he included Thomas Hall, clerk of New Kent County, who had never taken up arms in the rebellion but who had angered Berkeley in other matters. It was enough, however, that Hall, “by divers writings under his own hand.... a most notorious actor, aided and assisted in the rebellion....” One of the hanged rebels protested, no doubt truthfully, that he had always been a loyal subject of the Crown and only meant to take up arms against Indians. As in the case of many rebels, he was hanged in a cause the rapid progress of which had traveled far beyond his understanding. When the eminent William Drummond, who had incurred the dislike of Berkeley even before the
year’s events, was captured in the swamps and dragged in before the governor, Berkeley gloated: “Mister Drummond! You are very welcome. I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia; Mister Drummond you shall be hanged in half an hour.” To which Drummond steadfastly replied: “I expect no mercy from you. I have followed the lead of my conscience, and done what I might to free my country from oppression.” Allowing for a few hours missed, the promise was indeed carried out, and Drummond’s ring confiscated by Berkeley for good measure.

Most defiant of the captured rebels was Anthony Arnold, who delivered a trenchant attack on the rights of kings: “They have no rights but what they got by conquest and the sword, and he that can by force of the sword deprive them of it has as good and just a title to it as the king himself. If the king should deny to do me right I would make no more to sheath my sword in his heart or bowels than of my mortal enemies.” The court hung “the horrible resolved rebel and traitor” Arnold in chains, openly regretting that it could not draw and quarter him as well. Berkeley also proceeded to confiscate the estates of one rebel after another, thus recouping his own personal fortunes.

Unfortunately for Berkeley’s uninterrupted pleasure, the king’s commissioners arrived in January with a general pardon for all rebels. What is more, the commissioners promised that they would redress the grievances of the people. The king further ordered Berkeley back to England. But Berkeley, defying the commissioners, continued imposing his own loyalty oaths, seizing more property for his own use, and delaying publication of the king’s pardon. He finally published the pardon, but exempted eighteen nameless people—an excellent way of cowing the Virginians so as to keep them from bearing their grievances to the commissioners. Civil trials for treason proceeded apace, and several more were hanged.