To add to the uncertainty of life in Virginia, Indian troubles flared up
again. In and around the main settlements the white man was safe enough
from savage attack. But it was not so on the edge of the English world,
where the white hue ran thin, where small clusters of folk and even
single families built cabins of logs and made lonely clearings in the
wilderness.
Not far from where now rises Washington the Susquehannocks had taken
possession of an old fort. These Indians, once in league with the
Iroquois but now quarreling violently with that confederacy, had
been defeated and were in a mood of undiscriminating bitterness and
vengeance. They began to waylay and butcher white men and women and
children. In self protection Maryland and Virginia organized in common
an expedition against the Indian stronghold. In the deep woods beyond
the Potomac, red men and white came to a parley. The Susquehannocks sent
envoys. There was wrong on both sides. A dispute arose. The white men,
waxing angry, slew the envoys--an evil deed which their own color in
Maryland and in Virginia reprehended and repudiated. But the harm
was done. From the Potomac to the James Indians listened to Indian
eloquence, reciting the evils that from the first the white man had
brought. Then the red man, in increasing numbers, fell upon the outlying
settlements of the pioneers.
In Virginia there soon arose a popular clamor for effective action. Call
out the militia of every county! March against the Indians! Act! But the
Governor was old, of an ill temper now, and most suspicious of popular
gatherings for any purpose whatsoever. He temporized, delayed, refused
all appeals until the Assembly should meet.
Dislike of Berkeley and his ways and a growing sense of injury and
oppression began to quiver hard in the Virginian frame. The King was
no longer popular, nor Sir William Berkeley, nor were the most of the
Council, nor many of the burgesses of that Long Assembly. There arose a
loud demand for a new election and for changes in public policy.
Where a part of Richmond now stands, there stretched at that time a
tract of fields and hills and a clear winding creek, held by a young
planter named Nathaniel Bacon, an Englishman of that family which
produced "the wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind." The planter himself
lived farther down the river. But he had at this place an overseer
and some indentured laborers. This Nathaniel Bacon was a newcomer
in Virginia--young man who had been entered in Gray's Inn, who had
traveled, who was rumored to have run through much of his own estate.
He had a cousin, also named Nathaniel Bacon, who had come fifteen years
earlier to Virginia "a very rich, politic man and childless," and whose
representations had perhaps drawn the younger Bacon to Virginia. At any
rate he was here, and at the age of twenty-eight the owner of much land
and the possessor of a seat in the Council. But, though he sat in
the Council, he was hardly of the mind of the Governor and those who
supported him.
It was in the spring of 1676 that there began a series of Indian attacks
directed against the plantations and the outlying cabins of the region
above the Falls of the Far West. Among the victims were men of Bacon's
plantation, for his overseer and several of his servants were slain. The
news of this massacre of his men set their young master afire. Even a
less hideous tale might have done it, for he was of a bold and ardent
nature.
Riding up the forest tracks, a company of planters from the threatened
neighborhood gathered together. "Let us make a troop and take fire and
sword among them!" There lacked a commander. "Mr. Bacon, you command!"
Very good; and Mr. Bacon, who is a born orator, made a speech dealing
with the "grievances of the times." Very good indeed; but still there
lacked the Governor's commission. "Send a swift messenger to Jamestown
for it!"
The messenger went and returned. No commission. Mr. Bacon had made an
unpleasant impression upon Sir William Berkeley. This young man,
the Governor said, was "popularly inclined"--had "a constitution not
consistent with" all that Berkeley stood for. Bacon and his neighbors
listened with bent brows to their envoy's report. Murmurs began and
deepened. "Shall we stand idly here considering formalities, while the
redskins murder?" Commission or no commission, they would march; and in
the end, march they did--a considerable troop--to the up-river country,
with the tall, young, eloquent man at their head.
News reached the Governor at Jamestown that they were marching. In a
tight-lipped rage he issued a proclamation and sent it after them. They
and their leader were acting illegally, usurping military powers that
belonged elsewhere! Let them disband, disperse to their dwellings, or
beware action of the rightful powers! Troubled in mind, some disbanded
and dispersed, but threescore at least would by no means do so. Nor
would the young man "of precipitate disposition" who headed the troop.
He rode on into the forest after the Indians, and the others followed
him. Here were the Falls of the Far West, and here on a hill the Indians
had a "fort." This the Virginia planters attacked. The hills above the
James echoed to the sound of the small, desperate fray. In the end the
red men were routed. Some were slain; some were taken prisoner; others
escaped into the deep woods stretching westward.
In the meantime another force of horsemen had been gathered. It was
headed by Berkeley and was addressed to the pursuit and apprehension
of Nathaniel Bacon, who had thus defied authority. But before Berkeley
could move far, fire broke out around him. The grievances of the people
were many and just, and not without a family resemblance to those that
precipitated the Revolution a hundred years later. Not Bacon alone, but
many others who were in despair of any good under their present masters
were ready for heroic measures. Berkeley found himself ringed about by
a genuine popular revolt. He therefore lacked the time now to pursue
Nathaniel Bacon, but spurred back to Jamestown there to deal as best
he might with dangerous affairs. At Jamestown, willy-nilly, the old
Governor was forced to promise reforms. The Long Assembly should be
dissolved and a new Assembly, more conformable to the wishes of the
people, should come into being ready to consider all their troubles.
So writs went out; and there presently followed a hot and turbulent
election, in which that "restricted franchise" of the Long Assembly
was often defied and in part set aside. Men without property presented
themselves, gave their voices, and were counted. Bacon, who had by now
achieved an immense popularity, was chosen burgess for Henricus County.
In the June weather Bacon sailed down to Jamestown, with a number of
those who had backed him in that assumption of power to raise troops
and go against the Indians. When he came to Jamestown it was to find the
high sheriff waiting for him by the Governor's orders. He was put under
arrest. Hot discussion followed. But the people were for the moment
in the ascendent, and Bacon should not be sacrificed. A compromise
was reached. Bacon was technically guilty of "unlawful, mutinous and
rebellious practises." If, on his knees before Governor, Council, and
Burgesses, he would acknowledge as much and promise henceforth to be his
Majesty's obedient servant, he and those implicated with him should
be pardoned. He himself might be readmitted to the Council, and all in
Virginia should be as it had been. He should even have the commission he
had acted without to go and fight against the Indians.
Bacon thereupon made his submission upon his knees, promising that
henceforth he would "demean himself dutifully, faithfully, and
peaceably." Formally forgiven, he was restored to his place in the
Virginia Council. An eyewitness reports that presently he saw "Mr.
Bacon on his quondam seat with the Governor and Council, which seemed
a marvellous indulgence to one whom he had so lately proscribed as a
rebel." The Assembly of 1676 was of a different temper and opinion from
that of the Long Assembly. It was an insurgent body, composed to a large
degree of mere freemen and small planters, with a few of the richer,
more influential sort who nevertheless queried that old divine right of
rule. Berkeley thought that he had good reason to doubt this Assembly's
intentions, once it gave itself rein. He directs it therefore to confine
its attention to Indian troubles. It did, indeed, legislate on Indian
affairs by passing an elaborate act for the prosecution of the war.
An army of a thousand white men was to be raised. Bacon was to be
commander-in-chief. All manner of precautions were to be taken. But this
matter disposed of, the Assembly thereupon turned to "the redressing
several grievances the country was then labouring under; and motions
were made for inspecting the public revenues, the collectors' accounts,"
and so forth. The Governor thundered; friends of the old order
obstructed; but the Assembly went on its way, reforming here and
reforming there. It even went so far as to repeal the preceding
Assembly's legislation regarding the franchise. All white males who are
freemen were now privileged to vote, "together with the freeholders and
housekeepers."
A certain member wanted some detail of procedure retained because it was
customary. "Tis true it has been customary," answered another, "but
if we have any bad customs amongst us, we are come here to mend 'em!"
"Whereupon," says the contemporary narrator, "the house was set in
a laughter." But after so considerable an amount of mending there
threatened a standstill. What was to come next? Could men go further--as
they had gone further in England not so many years ago? Reform had come
to an apparent impasse. While it thus hesitated, the old party gained in
life.
Bacon, now petitioning for his promised commission against the Indians,
seems to have reached the conclusion that the Governor might promise but
meant not to perform, and not only so, but that in Jamestown his very
life was in danger. He had "intimation that the Governor's generosity
in pardoning him and restoring him to his place in the Council were no
other than previous wheedles to amuse him."
In Jamestown lived one whom a chronicler paints for us as "thoughtful
Mr. Lawrence." This gentleman was an Oxford scholar, noted for "wit,
learning, and sobriety... nicely honest, affable, and without blemish in
his conversation and dealings." Thus friends declared, though foes said
of him quite other things. At any rate, having emigrated to Virginia and
married there, he had presently acquired, because of a lawsuit over land
in which he held himself to be unjustly and shabbily treated through
influences of the Governor, an inveterate prejudice against that ruler.
He calls him in short "an old, treacherous villain." Lawrence and
his wife, not being rich, kept a tavern at Jamestown, and there Bacon
lodged, probably having been thrown with Lawrence before this. Persons
are found who hold that Lawrence was the brain, Bacon the arm, of the
discontent in Virginia. There was also Mr. William Drummond, who will be
met with in the account of Carolina. He was a "sober Scotch gentleman of
good repute"--but no more than Lawrence on good terms with the Governor
of Virginia.
On a morning in June, when the Assembly met, it was observed that
Nathaniel Bacon was not in his place in the Council--nor was he to be
found in the building, nor even in Jamestown itself, though Berkeley had
Lawrence's inn searched for him. He had left the town--gone up the river
in his sloop to his plantation at Curles Neck "to visit his wife, who,
as she informed him, was indisposed." In truth it appears that Bacon
had gone for the purpose of gathering together some six hundred up-river
men. Or perhaps they themselves had come together and, needing a leader,
had turned naturally to the man who was under the frown of an unpopular
Governor and all the Governor's supporters in Virginia. At any rate
Bacon was presently seen at the head of no inconsiderable army for
a colony of less than fifty thousand souls. Those with him were only
up-river men; but he must have known that he could gather besides from
every part of the country. Given some initial success, he might even set
all Virginia ablaze. Down the river he marched, he and his six hundred,
and in the summer heat entered Jamestown and drew up before the Capitol.
The space in front of this building was packed with the Jamestown folk
and with the six hundred. Bacon, a guard behind him, advanced to the
central door, to find William Berkeley standing there shaking with rage.
The old royalist has courage. He tears open his silken vest and fine
shirt and faces the young man who, though trained in the law of the
realm, is now filling that law with a hundred wounds. He raises a
passionate voice. "Here! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair mark--a fair mark!
Shoot!"
Bacon will not shoot him, but will have that promised commission to go
against the Indians. Those behind him lift and shake their guns. "We
will have it! We will have it!" Governor and Council retire to consider
the demand. If Berkeley is passionate and at times violent, so is
Bacon in his own way, for an eye-witness has to say that "he displayed
outrageous postures of his head, arms, body and legs, often tossing his
hand from his sword to his hat," and that outside the door he had cried:
"Damn my blood! I'll kill Governor, Council, Assembly and all, and
then I'll sheathe my sword in my own heart's blood!" He is no dour,
determined, unwordy revolutionist like the Scotch Drummond, nor still
and subtle like "the thoughtful Mr. Lawrence." He is young and hot, a
man of oratory and outward acts. Yet is he a patriot and intelligent
upon broad public needs. When presently he makes a speech to the excited
Assembly, it has for subject-matter "preserving our lives from the
Indians, inspecting the public revenues, the exorbitant taxes, and
redressing the grievances and calamities of that deplorable country." It
has quite the ring of young men's speeches in British colonies a century
later!
The Governor and his party gave in perforce. Bacon got his commission
and an Act of Indemnity for all chance political offenses. General and
Commander-in-chief against the Indians--so was he styled. Moreover,
the Burgesses, with an alarmed thought toward England, drew up an
explanatory memorial for Charles II's perusal. This paper journeyed
forth upon the first ship to sail, but it had for traveling companion
a letter secretly sent from the Governor to the King. The two
communications were painted in opposite colors. "I have," says Berkeley,
"for above thirty years governed the most flourishing country the sun
ever shone over, but am now encompassed with rebellion like waters."