Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion (1676).Nathaniel Bacon arrived in Virginia in 1674 with money for land and impeccable connections to the colony's elite. Two years later he died of swamp fever, the leader of a rebel army made up of former indentured servants. Bacon's transformation from gentleman planter to rebel ringleader united two potent animosities in colonial Virginia: the colonists' hatred of Indians and small freeholders' hatred of land‐monopolizing gentry.
Smallholders on Virginia's frontier had long‐running disputes with the Susquehannocks north of the James River and with the colony's elite. The sources of the free men's anger converged in 1676 when Governor William Berkeley, fearing the outbreak of Indian war, discountenanced Bacon's plans to lead a frontier army against the Indians and refused him a commission. Bacon planned to exterminate the Indians in the colony, and attack those beyond its border; Berkeley reasonably insisted on...
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