Our First Rebellion
Seen one insurrection, seen 'em all
History Repeats Itself
The hot debate over whether the Jan. 6, 2021, event at the nation’s capitol was an “insurrection” or a “protest” reminds me of similar dispute dating back to 1667 in Colonial Virginia. The rebellion featured all the familiar elements of an insurrection, or if you prefer, a protest—a brash leader and his rabble of followers, displaced natives, rich landowners, and a gentleman governor too long in power. Here is the story of Bacon’s Rebellion and the attempt to overthrow the colonial government that occurred a full century before the American Revolution and 200 years before the Civil War.
Part 1, No. 5
Previously on Unsettled:
The Kimbrough family leaves Maryland for new opportunities in Virginia. Mary and the younger children travel by boat while John and the older sons travel overland with livestock and supplies. While crossing a rain-swollen stream, Marmaduke, 13, is swept away and drowned.
Unsettled Times
When John Kimbrough reunited with his family in New Kent, Virginia, he had little time to mourn the death of his young son, for his arrival had landed him in the midst of an economic and social storm that would flare into rebellion. Virginia’s tobacco market was beset by low prices and high export taxes. Hailstorms, floods, and hurricanes devastated the region’s crops. While wealthier planters could withstand such downturns, subsistence farmers on the outlying frontier could not. There the soil was poor and the isolation left them vulnerable to Indian raids from the north. They also resented the Pamunkey an Algonquian-speaking tribe that lived on choice lands along the river. Under a peace treaty the colonial government had guaranteed the Pamunkey rights to their homelands in return for their loyalty to the crown.
Virginia Governor Sir William Berkeley, who fully supported the treaty, considered the Pamunkey as allies and useful “subjects.” Plantation owners sided with the governor knowing full well the economic benefits of peace. Besides, the planters already possessed most of lands that had once belonged to the Indians.
Sir Berkeley, a rice planter, soldier, and playwright, had served as Virginia’s governor for 40 years. But by his 70s he had lost interest in governing, not to mention the thankless task of keeping the peace between the colonists and the Indians.
The Troublemaker
Enter Nathan Bacon, Jr., Sir Berkeley’s wife’s arrogant nephew. Bacon’s father had exiled his son to the colonies, for among other things, trying to cheat a neighbor out of his inheritance. The governor obliged by giving Bacon a land grant and by appointing him to the Virginia Assembly. Sir Berkeley’s plan was to turn over some of his governing routines to Bacon and to give him the responsibility of improving relations between the colonists and the Pamunkey. Instead of flourishing under his uncle’s patronage, Bacon would burn the place down.
First Kill the Indians
At first Bacon traded with the Indians, but had a change of heart after Indians raided his own properties and killed his overseer. From then on his sympathies aligned with those bent upon retaliation. Unimaginably brash, Bacon asked his uncle to name him Commander of the Virginia Militia, a rank and position that would give him the authority to lead the fight to “ruin and extirpate [eradicate] all Indians.” He and a growing number of followers aimed to drive the natives out, then take their lands.
When the governor refused his request, Bacon gave himself the rank of colonel and the title of commander of the not-yet-formed militia. Quickly, however, the ambitious “Colonel” formed a 300-man militia made up of disgruntled colonists, and indentured and Black servants. The violence to come would come to bear his name—Bacon’s Rebellion.
In March of 1676, Bacon’s men attacked the Pamunkey village along the river, capturing and killing tribal members. His deadly raid forced Gov. Berkeley to call up the Virginia Militia, a colonial force of able-bodied men that included Pamunkey warriors and colonists such as John Kimbrough.
Burn It Down
On September 19, 1676 Col. Bacon’s forces attacked New Jamestown torching the original Virginia Statehouse, and setting fire to the church and more than a dozen homes. But a month after the raid, Bacon died suddenly, felled by bloody dysentery and a rumored infestation of body lice. Bacon’s death struck at the heart of the rebellion. In October a contingency of British soldiers arrived in Virginia and put an end to the insurrection. Meanwhile, Gov. Berkeley singled out 23 rebel leaders and hanged them all.
In the rebellion’s aftermath, Pamunkey leaders reasserted their treaty rights before the General Assembly emphasizing the toll on their own people, including the deaths of several of their warriors. The assembly reconfirmed the Pamunkey’s tribal lands and the Indians renewed their pledge of loyalty.
Virginia’s colonists, soldier and civilian alike, suffered their own losses in Bacon’s Rebellion. While the number of casualties and deaths is lost to the record, the Colony of Virginia granted pensions to those in the militia, including John Kimbrough, who had suffered “bodily injuries.” Following the devastating fire at Jamestown, the government relocated to Williamsburg, where a fire in 1747 also destroyed the new capitol, along with its storehouse of valuable colonial records.
The Aftermath
Sir Berkeley was recalled to England where the old governor died before he could defend his actions. White planters, alarmed that indentured servants and poor Blacks had joined forces in the uprising, passed a law making the slavery system “hereditary.” The law not only legalized generational slavery, in effect it rid plantation owners of the need for rebellion-prone indentured servants.
For more than a century, Bacon’s Rebellion was painted as a prelude to the American Revolution, with Bacon cast as courageous leader against corruption and unfair taxes. Time and scholarly scrutiny, however, revealed the tempestuous Bacon as acting in his own self-interest. The rebellion itself came to be seen as a class struggle for land and power at the expense of the native population.
As for Bacon’s surviving rebels, some shrugged off their defeat and headed farther into the western frontier. A subsequent generation would fight in the American Revolution and their descendants would settle in the hollows of Appalachia and on south where old resentments ignited the Civil War. Today, some 200 members of the federally recognized Pamunkey live on a 1,600-acre reservation bounded by the Pamunkey River.
John Kimbrough, a member of the Virginia militia, recovered from his injuries, for which he would receive a lifetime pension. As was his way, Kimbrough’s loyalty to the Crown would serve him well in the coming years.
Next: John Kimbrough finds prosperity, civic duty, and a new wife.
Tales from a Revolution: Bacon's Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America by James D. Rice
Bacon's Rebellion Explained: US History Review by Hip Hughes (A funny Youtube history lesson.)