Bacon with an increased army now rode out once more against the Indians.
He made a rendezvous on the upper York--the old Pamunkey--and to this
center he gathered horsemen until there may have been with him not far
from a thousand mounted men. From here he sent detachments against the
red men's villages in all the upper troubled country, and afar into
the sunset woods where the pioneer's cabin had not yet been builded. He
acted with vigor. The Indians could not stand against his horsemen and
concerted measures, and back they fell before the white men, westward
again; or, if they stayed in the ever dwindling villages, they gave
hostages and oaths of peace. Quiet seemed to descend once more upon the
border.
But, if the frontier seemed peaceful, Virginia behind the border was
a bubbling cauldron. Bacon had now become a hero of the people, a
Siegfried capable of slaying the dragon. Nor were Lawrence and Drummond
idle, nor others of their way of thinking. The Indian troubles might
soon be settled, but why not go further, marching against other
troubles, more subtle and long-continuing, and threatening all the
future?
In the midst of this speculation and promise of change, the Governor,
feeling the storm, dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed Bacon and his
adherents rebels and traitors, and made a desperate attempt to raise an
army for use against the new-fangledness of the time. This last he could
not do. Private interest led many planters to side with him, and there
was a fair amount of passionate conviction matching his own, that his
Majesty the King and the forces of law and order were being withstood,
and without just cause. But the mass of the people cried out to his
speeches, "Bacon! Bacon!" As the popular leader had been warned from
Jamestown by news of personal danger, so in his turn Berkeley seems to
have believed that his own liberty was threatened. With suddenness he
departed the place, boarded a sloop, and was "wafted over Chesapeake Bay
thirty miles to Accomac." The news of the Governor's flight, producing
both alarm in one party and enthusiasm in the other, tended to
precipitate the crisis. Though the Indian trouble might by now be called
adjusted, Bacon, far up the York, did not disband his men. He turned and
with them marched down country, not to Jamestown, but to a hamlet called
Middle Plantation, where later was to grow the town of Williamsburg.
Here he camped, and here took counsel with Lawrence and Drummond and
others, and here addressed, with a curious, lofty eloquence, the throng
that began to gather. Hence, too, he issued a "Declaration," recounting
the misdeeds of those lately in power, protesting against the terms
rebel and traitor as applied to himself and his followers, who are only
in arms to protect his Majesty's demesne and subjects, and calling on
those who are well disposed to reform to join him at Middle Plantation,
there to consider the state of the country which had been brought into a
bad way by "Sir William's doting and irregular actings."
Upon his proclamation many did come to Middle Plantation, great planters
and small, men just freed from indentured service, holders of no
land and little land and much land, men of all grades of weight and
consideration and all degrees of revolutionary will, from Drummond--with
a reported speech, "I am in overshoes; I will be in overboots!" and a
wife Sarah who snapped a stick in two with the cry, "I care no more for
the power of England than for this broken straw!"--to those who would be
revolutionary as long as, and only when, it seemed safe to be so.
How much of revolution, despite that speech about his Majesty's demesne
and subjects, was in Bacon's mind, or in Richard Lawrence's mind and
William Drummond's mind, or in the mind of their staunchest supporters,
may hardly now be resolved. Perhaps as much as was in the mind of
Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason a century later.
The Governor was in Accomac, breathing fire and slaughter, though as
yet without brand or sword with which to put his ardent desires into
execution. But he and the constituted order were not without friends
and supporters. He had, as his opponents saw, a number of "wicked and
pernicious counsellors, aides and assistants against the commonalty in
these our cruel commotions." Moreover--and a great moreover is that!--it
was everywhere bruited that he had sent to England, to the King, "for
two thousand Red Coates." Perhaps the King--perhaps England--will take
his view, and, not consulting the good of Virginia, send the Red Coats!
What then?
Bacon, as a measure of opposition, proposed "a test or recognition," to
be signed by those here at Middle Plantation who earnestly do wish the
good of Virginia. It was a bold test! Not only should they covenant to
give no aid to the whilom?? Governor against this new general and army,
but if ships should bring the Red Coats they were to withstand them.
There is little wonder that "this bugbear did marvellously startle" that
body of Virginia horsemen, those progressive gentlemen planters, and
others. Yet in the end, after violent contentions, the assembly at
Middle Plantation drew up and signed a remarkable paper, the "Oath at
Middle Plantation." Historically, it is linked on the one hand with
that "thrusting out of his government" of Sir John Harvey in Charles I's
time, and on the other with Virginian proceedings a hundred years later
under the third George. If his Majesty had been, as it was rumored,
wrongly informed that Virginia was in rebellion; if, acting upon that
misinformation, he sent troops against his loyal Virginians--who were
armed only against an evil Governor and intolerable woes then these same
good loyalists would "oppose and suppress all forces whatsoever of that
nature, until such time as the King be fully informed of the state
of the case." What was to happen if the King, being informed, still
supported Berkeley and sent other Red Coats was not taken into
consideration.
This paper, being drawn, was the more quickly signed because there
arrived, in the midst of the debate, a fresh Indian alarm. Attack
threatened a fort upon the York--whence the Governor had seen fit to
remove arms and ammunition! The news came most opportunely for Bacon.
"There were no more discourses." The major portion of the large
assemblage signed.
The old Government in Virginia was thus denied. But it was held that
government there must be, and that the people of Virginia through
representatives must arrange for it. Writs of election, made as usual in
the King's name, and signed by Bacon and by those members of the Council
who were of the revolt, went forth to all counties. The Assembly thus
provided was to meet at Jamestown in September.
So much business done, off rode Bacon and his men to put down this
latest rising of the Indians. Not only these but red men in a new
quarter, tribes south of the James, kept them employed for weeks
to come. Nor were they unmindful of that proud old man, Sir William
Berkeley, over on the Eastern Shore, a well-peopled region where
traveling by boat and by sandy road was sufficiently easy. Bacon,
Lawrence, and Drummond finally decided to take Sir William captive and
to bring him back to Jamestown. For this purpose they dispatched a ship
across the Bay, with two hundred and fifty men, under the command of
Giles Bland, "a man of courage and haughty bearing," and "no great
admirer of Sir William's goodness." The ship proceeded to the Accomac
shore, anchored in some bight, and sent ashore men to treat with the
Governor. But the Governor turned the tables on them. He made himself
captor, instead of being made captive. Bland and his lieutenants were
taken, whereupon their following surrendered into Berkeley's hands.
Bland's second in command was hanged; Bland himself was held in irons.
Now Berkeley's star was climbing. In Accomac he gathered so many that,
with those who had fled with him and later recruits who crossed the
Bay, he had perhaps a thousand men. He stowed these upon the ship of the
ill-fated Bland and upon a number of sloops. With seventeen sail in all,
the old Governor set his face west and south towards the mouth of the
James.
In that river, on the 7th of September, 1676, there appeared this fleet
of the King's Governor, set on retaking Virginia. Jamestown had notice.
The Bacon faction held the place with perhaps eight hundred men, Colonel
Hansford at their head. Summoned by Berkeley to surrender, Hansford
refused, but that same night, by advice of Lawrence and Drummond,
evacuated the place, drawing his force off toward the York. The next
day, emptied of all but a few citizens, Jamestown received the old
Governor and his army.
The tidings found Bacon on the upper York. Acting with his accustomed
energy, he sent out, far and wide, ringing appeals to the country to
rouse itself, for men to join him and march to the defeat of the old
tyrant. Numbers did come in. He moved with "marvelous celerity." When
he had, for the time and place, a large force of rebels, he marched, by
stream and plantation, tobacco field and forest, forge and mill, through
the early autumn country to Jamestown. Civil war was on.
Across the narrow neck of the Jamestown peninsula had been thrown a sort
of fortification with ditch, earthwork, and palisade. Before this
Bacon now sounded trumpets. No answer coming, but the mouths of cannon
appearing at intervals above the breastwork, the "rebel" general halted,
encamped his men, and proceeded to construct siege lines of his own. The
work must be done exposed to Sir William's iron shot.
Now comes a strange and discreditable incident. Patriots,
revolutionists, who on the whole would serve human progress, have yet,
as have we all, dark spots and seamy sides. Bacon's parties of workmen
were threatened, hindered, driven from their task by Berkeley's guns.
Bacon had a curious, unadmirable idea. He sent horsemen to neighboring
loyalist plantations to gather up and bring to camp, not the
planters--for they are with Berkeley in Jamestown--but the planters'
wives. Here are Mistress Bacon (wife of the elder Nathaniel Bacon),
Mistress Bray; Mistress Ballard, Mistress Page, and others. Protesting,
these ladies enter Bacon's camp, who sends one as envoy into the town
with the message that, if Berkeley attacks, the whole number of women
shall be placed as shield to Bacon's men who build earthworks.
He was as good--or as bad--as his word. At the first show of action
against his workmen these royalist women were placed in the front and
were kept there until Bacon had made his counter-line of defense.
Sir William Berkeley had great faults, but at times--not always--he
displayed chivalry. For that day "the ladies' white aprons" guarded
General Bacon and all his works. The next day, the defenses completed,
this "white garde" was withdrawn.
Berkeley waited no longer but, though now at a disadvantage, opened fire
and charged with his men through gate and over earthworks. The battle
that followed was short and decisive. Berkeley's chance-gathered army
was no match for Bacon's seasoned Indian fighters and for desperate men
who knew that they must win or be hanged for traitors. The Governor's
force wavered and, unable to stand its ground, turned and fled, leaving
behind some dead and wounded. Then Bacon, who also had cannon, opened
upon the town and the ships that rode before it. In the night the King's
Governor embarked for the second time and with him, in that armada from
the Eastern Shore, the greater part of the force he had gathered. When
dawn came, Bacon saw that the ships, large and small, were gone, sailing
back to Accomac. Bacon and his following thus came peaceably into
Jamestown, but with the somewhat fell determination to burn the place.
It should "harbor no more rogues." What Bacon, Lawrence, Drummond,
Hansford, and others really hoped--whether they forecasted a republican
Virginia finally at peace and prosperous--whether they saw in a vision
a new capital, perhaps at Middle Plantation, perhaps at the Falls of
the Far West, a capital that should be without old, tyrannic
memories--cannot now be said. However it all may be, they put torch
to the old capital town and soon saw it consumed, for it was no great
place, and not hard to burn.
Jamestown had hardly ceased to smoke when news came that loyalists under
Colonel Brent were gathering in northern counties. Bacon, now ill but
energetic to the end, turned with promptness to meet this new alarm. He
crossed the York and marched northward through Gloucester County. But
the rival forces did not come to a fight. Brent's men deserted by
the double handful. They came into Bacon's ranks "resolving with the
Persians to go and worship the rising sun." Or, hanging fire, reluctant
to commit themselves either way, they melted from Brent, running
homeward by every road. Bacon, with an enlarged, not lessened army, drew
back into Gloucester. Revolutionary fortunes shone fair in prospect. Yet
it was but the moment of brief, deceptive bloom before decay and fall.
At this critical moment Bacon fell sick and died. Some said that he was
poisoned, but that has never been proved. The illness that had attacked
him during his siege of Jamestown and that held on after his victory
seems to have sufficed for his taking off. In Gloucester County he
"surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep, into the hands
of that grim and all-conquering Captaine Death." His body was buried,
says the old account, "but where deposited till the Generall day not
knowne, only to those who are resolutely silent in that particular."
With Bacon's death there fell to pieces all this hopeful or unhopeful
movement. Lawrence might have a subtle head and Drummond the courage
to persevere; Hansford, Cheeseman, Bland, and others might have varied
abilities. But the passionate and determined Bacon had been the organ
of action; Bacon's the eloquence that could bring to the cause men with
property to give as well as men with life to lose. It is a question how
soon, had Bacon not died, must have failed his attempt at revolution,
desperate because so premature.
Back came Berkeley from Accomac, his turbulent enemy thus removed.
All who from the first had held with the King's Governor now rode
emboldened. Many who had shouted more or less loudly for the rising
star, now that it was so untimely set, made easy obeisance to the old
sun. A great number who had wavered in the wind now declared that they
had done no such thing, but had always stood steadfast for the ancient
powers.
The old Governor, who might once have been magnanimous, was changed for
the worse. He had been withstood; he would punish. He now gave full rein
to his passionate temper, his bigotry for the throne, and his feeling of
personal wrong. He began in Virginia to outlaw and arrest rebels, and to
doom them to hasty trials and executions. There was no longer a united
army to meet, but only groups and individuals striving for safety
in flight or hiding. Hansford was early taken and hanged with two
lieutenants of Bacon, Wilford and Farlow. Cheeseman died in prison.
Drummond was taken in the swamps of the Chickahominy and carried before
the Governor. Berkeley brought his hands together. "Mr. Drummond, you
are very welcome! I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia!
Mr. Drummond you shall be hanged in half an hour!" Not in half an hour,
but on the same day he was hanged, imperturbable Scot to the last.
Lawrence, held by many to have been more than Bacon the true author of
the attempt, either put an end to himself or escaped northward, for he
disappears from history. "The last account of Mr. Lawrence was from an
uppermost plantation whence he and four other desperadoes with horses,
pistols, etc., marched away in a snow ankle deep." They "were thought
to have cast themselves into a branch of some river, rather than to
be treated like Drummond." Thus came to early and untimely end the
ringleaders of Bacon's Rebellion. In all, by the Governor's command,
thirty-seven men suffered death by hanging.
There comes to us, down the centuries, the comment of that King for whom
Berkeley was so zealous, a man who fell behind his colonial Governor in
singleness of interest but excelled him in good nature. "That old fool,"
said the second Charles, "has hanged more men in that naked country than
I have done for the murder of my father!"
That letter which Berkeley had written some months before to his
sovereign about the "waters of rebellion" was now seen to have borne
fruit. In January, while the Governor was yet running down fugitives,
confiscating lands, and hanging "traitors," a small fleet from England
sailed in, bringing a regiment of "Red Coates," and with them three
commissioners charged with the duty of bringing order out of confusion.
These commissioners, bearing the King's proclamation of pardon to all
upon submission, were kinder than the irascible and vindictive Governor
of Virginia, and they succeeded at last in restraining his fury. They
made their report to England, and after some months obtained a second
royal proclamation censuring Berkeley's vengeful course, "so derogatory
to our princely clemency," abrogating the Assembly's more violent acts,
and extending full pardon to all concerned in the late "rebellion,"
saving only the arch-rebel Bacon--to whom perhaps it now made little
difference if they pardoned him or not.
But with this piece of good nature, so characteristic of the second
Charles, there came neither to the King in person nor to England as a
whole any appreciation of the true ills behind the Virginian revolt, nor
any attempt to relieve them. Along with the King's first proclamation
came instructions for the Governor. "You shall be no more obliged to
call an Assembly once every year, but only once in two years.... Also
whensoever the Assembly is called fourteen days shall be the time
prefixed for their sitting and no longer." And the narrowed franchise
that Bacon's Assembly had widened is narrowed again. "You shall take
care that the members of the Assembly be elected only by freeholders,
as being more agreeable to the custom of England." Nor is the grant
to Culpeper and Arlington revoked. Nor, wider and deeper, are the
Navigation Laws in any wise bettered. No more than before, no more
indeed than a century later, is there any conception that the child
exists no more for the parent than the parent for the child.
Sir William Berkeley's loyalty had in the end overshot itself. His zeal
fatigued the King, and in 1677 he was recalled to England. As Governor
of Virginia he had been long popular at first but in his old age
detested. He had great personal courage, fidelity, and generosity for
those things that ran with the current of a deep and narrow soul. He
passes from the New World stage, a marked and tragic figure. Behind him
his vengeances displeased even loyalist Virginia, willing on the whole
to let bygones be bygones among neighbors and kindred. It is said that;
when his ship went down the river, bonfires were lighted and cannon and
muskets fired for joy. And so beyond the eastward horizon fades the old
reactionary.
Herbert Jeffreys and then Sir Henry Chicheley follow Berkeley as
Governors of Virginia; they are succeeded by Lord Culpeper and he by
Lord Howard of Effingham. King Charles dies and James the Second rules
in England. Culpeper and Effingham play the Governor merely for what
they can get for themselves out of Virginia.* The price of tobacco goes
down, down. The crops are too large; the old poor remedies of letting
much acreage go unplanted, or destroying and burning where the measure
of production is exceeded, and of petitions to the King, are all
resorted to, but they procure little relief. Virginia cannot be called
prosperous. England hears that the people are still disaffected and
unquiet and England stolidly wonders why.
* In 1684 the Crown purchased from Culpeper all his rights
except in the Northern Neck.
During the reign of the second Charles, Maryland had suffered from
political unrest somewhat less than Virginia. The autocracy of Maryland
was more benevolent and more temperate than that of her southern
neighbor. The name of Calvert is a better symbol of wisdom than the name
of Berkeley. Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, dying in 1675, has
a fair niche in the temple of human enlightenment. His son Charles
succeeded, third Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietary of Maryland.
Well-intentioned, this Calvert lacked something of the ability of either
his father or his grandfather. Though he lived in Maryland while his
father had lived in England, his government was not as wise as his
father's had been.
But in Maryland, even before the death of Cecil Calvert, inherent evils
were beginning to form of themselves a visible body. In Maryland, as in
Virginia, there set in after the Restoration a period of reaction,
of callous rule in the interests of an oligarchy. In 1669 a "packed"
Council and an "aristocratic" Assembly procured a restriction of the
franchise similar to that introduced into Virginia. As in Virginia,
an Assembly deemed of the right political hue was kept in being by the
device of adjournment from year to year. In Maryland, as in Virginia,
public officials were guilty of corruption and graft. In 1676 there
seems to have lacked for revolt, in Maryland, only the immediate
provocative of acute Indian troubles and such leaders as Bacon,
Lawrence, and Drummond. The new Lord Baltimore being for the time in
England, his deputy writes him that never were any "more replete with
malignancy and frenzy than our people were about August last, and they
wanted but a monstrous head to their monstrous body." Two leaders indeed
appeared, Davis and Pate by name, but having neither the standing nor
the strength of the Virginia rebels, they were finally taken and
hanged. What supporters they had dispersed, and the specter of armed
insurrection passed away.
The third Lord Baltimore, like his father, found difficulty in
preserving the integrity of his domain. His father had been involved in
a long wrangle over the alleged invasion of Maryland by the Dutch. Since
then, New Netherland had passed into English hands. Now there occurred
another encroachment on the territory of Maryland. This time the invader
was an Englishman named William Penn. Just as the idea of a New World
freedom for Catholics had appealed to the first Lord Baltimore, so now
to William Penn, the Quaker, came the thought of freedom there for
the Society of Friends. The second Charles owed an old debt to Penn's
father. He paid it in 1681 by giving to the son, whom he liked, a
province in America. Little by little, in order to gain for Penn access
to the sea, the terms of his grant were widened until it included,
beside the huge Pennsylvanian region, the tract that is now Delaware,
which was then claimed by Baltimore. Maryland protested against
the grant to Penn, as Virginia had protested against the grant to
Baltimore--and equally in vain. England was early set upon the road to
many colonies in America, destined later to become many States. One by
one they were carved out of the first great unity.
In 1685 the tolerant Charles the Second died. James the Second, a
Catholic, ruled England for about three years, and then fled before
the Revolution of 1688. William and Mary, sovereigns of a Protestant
England, came to the throne. We have seen that the Proprietary of
Maryland and his numerous kinsmen and personal adherents were Catholics.
Approximately one in eight of other Marylanders were fellows in that
faith. Another eighth of the people held with the Church of England. The
rest, the mass of the folk, were dissenters from that Church. And now
all the Protestant elements together--the Quakers excepted--solidified
into political and religious opposition to the Proprietary's rule.
Baltimore, still in England, had immediately, upon the accession of
William and Mary, dispatched orders to the Maryland Council to proclaim
them King and Queen. But his messenger died at sea, and there was delay
in sending another. In Maryland the Council would not proclaim the new
sovereigns without instructions, and it was even rumored that Catholic
Maryland meant to withstand the new order.
In effect the old days were over. The Protestants, Churchmen and
Dissenters alike, proceeded to organize under a new leader, one John
Coode. They formed "An Association in arms for the defense of the
Protestant religion, and for asserting the right of King William and
Queen Mary to the Province of Maryland and all the English Dominions."
Now followed a confused time of accusations and counter-accusations,
with assertions that Maryland Catholics were conspiring with the Indians
to perpetrate a new St. Bartholomew massacre of Protestants, and hot
counter-assertions that this is "a sleveless fear and imagination
fomented by the artifice of some ill-minded persons." In the end Coode
assembled a force of something less than a thousand men and marched
against St. Mary's. The Council, which had gathered there, surrendered,
and the Association for the Defense found itself in power. It proceeded
to call a convention and to memorialize the King and Queen, who in the
end approved its course. Maryland passed under the immediate government
of the Crown. Lord Baltimore might still receive quit-rents and customs,
but his governmental rights were absorbed into the monarchy. Sir Lionel
Copley came out as Royal Governor, and a new order began in Maryland.
The heyday of Catholic freedom was past. England would have a Protestant
America. Episcopalians were greatly in the minority, but their Church
now became dominant over both Catholic and Dissenter, and where the
freethinker raised his head he was smitten down. Catholic and Dissenter
and all alike were taxed to keep stable the Established Church. The old
tolerance, such as it was, was over. Maryland paced even with the rest
of the world.
Presently the old capital of St. Mary's was abandoned. The government
removed to the banks of the Severn, to Providence--soon, when Anne
should be Queen, to be renamed Annapolis. In vain the inhabitants of
St. Mary's remonstrated. The center of political gravity in Maryland had
shifted.
The third Lord Baltimore died in 1715. His son Benedict, fourth lord,
turned from the Catholic Church and became a member of the Church of
England. Dying presently, he left a young son, Charles, fifth Lord
Baltimore, to be brought up in the fold of the Established Church.
Reconciled now to the dominant creed, with a Maryland where Catholics
were heavily penalized, Baltimore resumed the government under favor of
the Crown. But it was a government with a difference. In Maryland, as
everywhere, the people were beginning to hold the reins. Not again the
old lord and the old underling! For years to come the lords would say
that they governed, but strong life arose beneath, around, and above
their governing.
Maryland had by 1715 within her bounds more than forty thousand white
men and nearly ten thousand black men. She still planted and shipped
tobacco, but presently found how well she might raise wheat, and
that it, too, was valuable to send away in exchange for all kinds of
manufactured things. Thus Maryland began to be a land of wheat still
more than a land of tobacco.
For the rest, conditions of life in Maryland paralleled pretty closely
those in Virginia. Maryland was almost wholly rural; her plantations
and farms were reached with difficulty by roads hardly more than
bridle-paths, or with ease by sailboat and rowboat along the innumerable
waterways. Though here and there manors--large, easygoing, patriarchal
places, with vague, feudal ways and customs--were to be found, the
moderate sized plantation was the rule. Here stood, in sight usually of
blue water, the planter's dwelling of brick or wood. Around it grew up
the typical outhouses, household offices, and storerooms; farther away
yet clustered the cabin quarters alike of slaves and indentured labor.
Then stretched the fields of corn and wheat, the fields of tobacco.
Here, at river or bay side, was the home wharf or landing. Here the
tobacco was rolled in casks; here rattled the anchor of the ship
that was to take it to England and bring in return a thousand and one
manufactured articles. There were no factories in Maryland or Virginia.
Yet artisans were found among the plantation laborers--"carpenters,
coopers, sawyers, blacksmiths, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners,
weavers, and knitters." Throughout the colonies, as in every new
country, men and women, besides being agriculturists, produced homemade
much that men, women, and children needed. But many other articles and
all luxuries came in the ships from overseas, and the harvest of the
fields paid the account.