Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion
was led by Nathaniel Bacon (1647–76), a Virginia planter who caused the people to take up arms (1676), ostensibly against the Indians, but actually to curb the dictatorial policy of Sir William Berkeley. Berkeley made some concessions but did not keep faith with the insurgents, and the rebellion ended for want of a leader at Bacon's sudden death by fever. An epitaph is in the Burwell Papers, and Bacon figures in W.A. Caruthers's The Cavaliers of Virginia, Mary Johnston's Prisoners of Hope, and other romances, and in a poem by Ebenezer Cook.