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We appeal to the country itself.... Let us trace these men in authority and favor...; let us observe the sudden rise of their estates compared with the quality in which they first entered the country or the reputation they have held here amongst the wise and discerning men, and let us see whether their extractions and education have not been vile.1
Nathaniel Bacon, Declaration of the People, July 30, 1676 The founding of English colonies in North America opened enormous windows of opportunity for wealth and status for England's elite. Merchants would grow richer, speculators' holdings would grow larger, and the commoner's vision of land ownership - the very essence and foundation of freedom in England - was much closer to realization. Those who traveled to the English New World, voluntarily and involuntarily, to work as indentured servants in exchange for land and freedom hoped for a new start that would allow them and posterity to prosper. But the conflict between rich and poor present in England would not disappear in the North American colonies - a conflict now ancillary to the growing racial hostility between the colonists and native inhabitants of the land. The antagonism which occurred between poor whites newly emancipated and granted small portions of land and neighboring Indian tribes would prove to be a difficult problem for the ruling class to manage. What would ultimately fulminate into Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia was a prime example of how racial hatred, class enmity, and the desire for land and prosperity threatened the very survival of England's colony. Hostilities between colonists and American Indian tribes were omnipresent in the second half of the seventeenth century. In New England, Metacom's War devastated the landscape in 1675-76, and New Englanders were, according to Gary Nash, indeed fighting for their lives. At war's end several thousand colonists and twice as many Indians were dead. Twelve Puritan towns were destroyed and another forty attacked by the resisting tribes. Indian villages were even more devastated. The lessons of such a war reverberated throughout the colonies: Many Indian nations "were prepared to risk extinction rather than become a colonized and culturally imperialized people," and they would go to great lengths, particularly by banding together in confederation, to defend their way of life, their survival.2 It was at about the time of Metacom's War that similar hostilities were brewing in Maryland and Virginia. But unlike the war in New England, Bacon's Rebellion would seemingly hit without any warning. It was a complex affair, led by a wealthy proprietor who owned a sizable tract of land north of Jamestown, along with a number of slaves, against Native Americans foremost but also against a new elite that emerged after the founding of the colony. Racial hostility, land greed, class antipathy, and outright fanaticism combined to bring a deadly rebellion to one of England's most prosperous colonies. |
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