Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion
The Burning of Jamestown by Howard Pyle
Date1676–1677
Location
Jamestown, Colony of Virginia
GoalsChange in Virginia's Native American-Frontier policy
MethodsDemonstrations, vigilantes
Resulted in
  • Failure of the rebellion
  • Mass executions of the rebellion's leaders
  • Berkeley recalled to England
Parties
Virginia colonists, indentured servants and slaves
Lead figures
Number
300–500
200
Casualties and losses
Deaths: 25 executed[1]
None
100–400 Native Americans massacred by rebels

Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley, after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive Native American Indians out of Virginia.[2] Thousands of Virginians from all classes (including those in indentured servitude) and races rose up in arms against Berkeley, chasing him from Jamestown and ultimately torching the settlement. The rebellion was first suppressed by a few armed merchant ships from London whose captains sided with Berkeley and the loyalists.[3]

Government forces led by Herbert Jeffreys arrived soon after and spent several years defeating pockets of resistance and reforming the colonial government to be once more under direct Crown control.[4] While the rebellion did not succeed in the initial goal of driving the Native Americans from Virginia, it did result in Berkeley being recalled to England, where he died shortly thereafter.

Bacon's rebellion was the first rebellion in the North American colonies in which discontented frontiersmen took part. A somewhat similar uprising in Maryland involving John Coode and Josias Fendall took place in 1689. The alliance between European indentured servants and Africans (a mix of indentured, enslaved, and Free Negroes) disturbed the colonial upper class. They responded by hardening the racial caste of slavery in an attempt to divide the two races from subsequent united uprisings with the passage of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705.[5][2][6]

  1. ^ see note on talk page
  2. ^ a b "Bacon's Rebellion". PBS. Africans in America/Part 1. Archived from the original on February 18, 2020. Retrieved January 17, 2023.
  3. ^ Webb, Stephen Saunders (1995). 1676: The End of American Independence. Syracuse University Press. pp. 87–93. ISBN 978-0-8156-0361-0.
  4. ^ Webb, Stephen Saunders (1995). 1676: The End of American Independence. Syracuse University Press. pp. 10–13. ISBN 978-0-8156-0361-0.
  5. ^ Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!: An American History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), p. 100.
  6. ^ "Green Spring Plantation". Historic Jamestowne, National Park Service. Archived from the original on October 15, 2014. Retrieved March 25, 2008.