Bacon's rebellion (1676)

BACON’S REBELLION (1676)

Bacon’s Rebellion was the last major uprising of enslaved blacks and white indentured servants in Colonial Virginia. One consequence of the failed rebellion was the intensification of African slavery and the social separation of blacks and whites in Virginia.

The origins of Bacon’s Rebellion rested with the conquest of the Powhatan Indian Confederation (1644-1646) and the Confederation’s lands being distributed to the English planter class. Despite their defeat, Indians formally associated with the Confederation continued squatting on these lands, which caused the Virginia colonists to engage in warfare against them.

The military and political situation was made more complication by the presence of African slaves, who along with indentured servants produced the colony’s main crop, tobacco. Planters looked down upon the slaves, indentured servants, and landless freemen both White and Black, whom they called the “giddy multitude.”

The two main antagonists during the rebellion, Virginia Colonial Governor William Berkeley and landowner Nathaniel Bacon, were both purchasers of former Powhatan land near Jamestown. During the decades of the 1650s and 1660s a sizable number of indentured servants, Black and white, who had completed their required indentured labor service, clamored for old Powhatan land as well which was under the control of Berkeley and his planter class associates.

Bacon joined and led these former servants in attacking peaceful Indians to acquire their lands. Berkeley, however, fearing an outbreak of war between whites and Indians on the frontier, jailed Bacon for a few months, because of these attacks.

Once released, Bacon declared himself the leader of the colony’s former indentured servants, freemen, black and white, newly arrived landless immigrants from England, Scotland, or Ireland, and enslaved blacks, all of whom bonded together because of their common exploitation on the large tobacco estates. Understanding that the promotion of their grievances served his own interests in power and additional land, Bacon marched on Jamestown, the colonial capital, with 500 men and confronted Governor Berkeley, who escaped. Bacon then issued his “Declaration of the People”. In this document, he accused Governor Berkeley of corruption and of being pro-Native American.

After Bacon’s death, the revolution lost its leader, but he gained wide support among the slaves. As a result, they achieved that only blacks could be used as slaves, and whites were promised various benefits.

These decisions marked the beginning of a long period of “black slavery” when blacks were used for agricultural work, especially in the production of cotton and tobacco.