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Chapter 3: Rethinking the “American Paradox”
Bacon’s Rebellion, Indians, and the U.S. History Survey
JAMES D. RICE
Historians have long considered Bacon’s Rebellion, a civil war that convulsed Virginia in 1676, one of the most important events in all of American history. A staple of textbooks and survey courses, it enjoys an unusually high level of name recognition for a prerevolutionary event that was not a “founding,” so much so that an online search turns up appropriations of the name for contemporary political uses. Not coincidently, its causes, consequences, and meaning have been much contested. Did its youthful leader Nathaniel Bacon, the “Torchbearer of the Revolution,” launch a democratic struggle against the tyranny of Virginia’s colonial governor William Berkeley, the embodiment of royal absolutism in America? Or was Bacon the anti-torchbearer, leading the way to a long, dark American tradition of slavery and racism?^1
The story of Bacon’s Rebellion usually goes something like this: In the summer of 1675 a trading dispute between a Virginia planter and some Indians along the Potomac River turned violent. Differences soon arose among Virginians over how best to prosecute the resulting “Susquehannock War.” Governor Berkeley’s strategy was essentially defensive and focused on the Susquehannocks alone. Many Virginians, however, saw in the war an opportunity to go on the offensive, not only against the Susquehannocks but against all Indians in the region. In the spring of 1676 Bacon, a wealthy young newcomer to Virginia, emerged as the leader of this latter group. After Berkeley refused Bacon’s repeated requests for a commission “to go out against the Indians,” Bacon led an unauthorized attack against the Occaneechees, who were allies of Virginia. This made him a rebel. Baconites and Berkeley loyalists first aimed guns at one another in late June, and throughout the summer of 1676 they alternated possession of Virginia’s capital at Jamestown. The rebels generally prevailed, forcing Berkeley and other leading loyalists to take refuge on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. In mid-September the rebels burned Jamestown to the ground. When Bacon died of disease in October, however, the rebellion fell apart. It was all over by late January 1677. A regiment of
regular troops, accompanied by royal commissioners sent to investigate the matter, arrived from England shortly after the final suppression of the uprising. They placed much of the blame on Berkeley. Berkeley was recalled to England but died in London before he could defend his handling of the rebellion to the king. The most influential explanation of these events today is Edmund S. Morgan’s 1975 American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. Bacon’s Rebellion, Morgan argues, was an “instinctive attempt to subdue class conflict by racism.” The result was a new settlement in which planters replaced white indentured servants with enslaved Africans, and whites of all ranks bonded together as members of a single race. Having learned from the rebellion that “resentment of an alien race might be more powerful than resentment of an upper class,” Virginia’s ruling class began to offer their (white) social inferiors better opportunities, more political power, and more respect. Bacon’s Rebellion was therefore a pivotal moment in the creation of what Morgan calls “the central paradox of American history”: that is, the intimate marriage between freedom and slavery in which the emerging rhetoric of American liberty was completely intertwined with the rise of racial slavery.^2 Morgan’s thesis features prominently in many survey courses and textbooks, and with good reason. American Slavery, American Freedom , after all, connects the colonial period (foreign territory to many instructors and virtually all students) to some of the most important themes in U.S. history: the centrality of slavery, the rise of an aggressively democratic society, and the vexed relationships between (and legacies of) slavery and democracy down to the present. It helps to account for the closely interrelated phenomena of white populism, African American slavery, and the pervasive rhetoric of liberty and freedom among slaveholders in revolutionary-era Virginia and in the United States thereafter.^3 Yet a survey course featuring Morgan’s interpretation of Bacon’s Rebellion misses out on the opportunity to tell a still-larger story. This is because it glosses over the experiences and motivations of Native Americans, who were far more central to the rebellion—and to American history as a whole—than Morgan and other scholars have acknowledged. Indeed, a Native-centered account of Bacon’s Rebellion actually meshes better with the major themes and interpretations commonly offered in U.S. history surveys than does an Indian-free version of the rebellion. It better explains the origins of slavery and the “central paradox of American history” by connecting these developments to the rise of the Indian slave trade. It also fits with the well-established theme of the contest of European empires for North America, particularly between the
French and the English. Because the rebellion became entangled with a resurgent English “antipopery” during the 1670s, it ties in nicely with existing survey-course treatments of religion and politics. Finally, it comports well with today’s emphasis on the broader contexts—both “continental” and “Atlantic”—of American history.
The nearly two centuries between the founding of the first English colonies and the events leading up to the American Revolution often fit uneasily into survey courses. The period features a confusingly varied cast of characters with unfamiliar names in strange languages, representing people who do not normally figure in popular or K– history: Dutch and French colonists, African peoples, and, above all, hundreds of Indian nations. It is not easy to piece together a coherent story from these scattered accounts about unfamiliar peoples, places, and events, either in the sense of weaving a compelling tale that will hold students’ attention, or in the sense of situating colonial events in a broader narrative in a survey course that is really about U.S. national history. Bacon’s Rebellion is a rare exception to this rule. More than most events in early American history, it generated colorful, compelling narratives that read well even today. Take, for example, Thomas Mathew’s account of how local militiamen in northern Virginia, in attacking a group of Doeg Indians who had just murdered an Englishman named Robert Hen, accidently set off a war with the Susquehannock Nation. After Hen’s murder two militia units tracked the Doegs through the night, following the south bank of the Potomac River until they found the Doegs’ crossing point not far below modern-day Washington, D.C. Landing on the north bank of the river at dawn, the militiamen found two paths leading into the woods. Each led to a small cabin. At the first cabin Captain George Brent called out in “the Indian tongue,” asking for a matchacomicha —a council. When the Doegs’ leader emerged, however, Brent seized him by his hair and demanded “the murderer of Robert Hen.” The Doeg tried to escape, but Brent shot him dead. His men opened fire, killing ten more Doegs.
Colonel George Mason and his men were already positioned around the second cabin when the gunfire startled the inhabitants awake. Alarmed and disoriented, the Indians rushed directly into a volley that killed fourteen men. In the confusion one of the survivors was able to seize Mason by the arm and cry out “Susquehanoughs netoughs” (“Susquehannock friends”) before disappearing into the woods. Susquehannocks? Mason panicked. The Doegs, not the Susquehannocks, had killed Robert Hen. In fact, the Susquehannocks had been close allies of Virginia for nearly fifty years. Mason “ran amongst his Men, Crying out ‘For the Lords sake Shoot no more, these are our friends the Susquehanoughs.’” It was too late, though. The
Susquehannocks could hardly let these unprovoked killings go, and the resulting cycle of revenge soon spiraled into a war between Virginia and the Susquehannocks.^4 Students perk up when such stories are told. But to what purpose can the tale of Bacon’s Rebellion be put, beyond entertainment? How can instructors channel the spark of interest generated by weird tales from the distant past into a deeper understanding of American history? The trick, of course, is to connect these small stories to bigger stories: specifically, the midlevel stories that occupy the space between and connect colorful vignettes with the major points and overarching themes of American history. By “midlevel” I mean stories within a dramatic, but not epic, scale. Such tales begin by establishing a source of narrative tension—a problem faced by a limited number of identifiable and relatable characters—and end shortly after that source of narrative tension has been resolved. Bacon’s Rebellion is easily adapted to this standard dramatic narrative structure. Almost too easily, in fact: the beginning of personal struggle between “the Governor and the Rebel” (they first clashed in 1675) and the end of that struggle with their twin deaths (in October 1676 and July 1677) exert such a strong narrative pull that many writers take these to be the natural beginning and ending to the story. Yet this chronology is fundamentally flawed, because the only dramatic tension it resolves is the mano a mano contest between Berkeley and Bacon. The real-life issues at play during Bacon’s Rebellion did not begin with the face-off between Bacon and Berkeley, and they were in no way resolved by Bacon’s and Berkeley’s deaths. What, then, were those deeper sources of tension, not only for the rebels but for everyone who was caught up in the rebellion? Some surprising answers emerge when the question is posed in such an open-ended fashion, and also some surprising actors— most notably, a variety of Indian nations along an arc of territory from Iroquoia in the north to Florida in the south. When Indians are integrated into the story as distinct nations, each with its own strengths, vulnerabilities, and strategies for dealing with each other and with the colonies, it becomes clear that Bacon’s Rebellion cannot be understood purely by reference to the inner workings of Virginia’s colonial society. In fact, it turns out that the major issues being contested predated Bacon’s Rebellion, were accentuated rather than resolved by the conflict, and took another generation to work out. For “neighbor Indians” living within Virginia, the problem was how to survive in an era of increasingly aggressive colonial encroachment; for the nations to the south of Virginia, how to survive a brutal cycle of intra-Indian wars, slaving, migrations, and consolidations, which were intensifying with the rapid expansion of the
inexpensive) policies; thus his strategy was to isolate the Susquehannocks, enlist Virginia’s “neighbor Indians” in the effort (not difficult, since they had their own long histories with the Susquehannocks), and avoid major campaigns that would necessitate higher taxes.^6 The rebels, in contrast, saw in the Susquehannock War the opportunity to launch a more general war that would resolve all of their problems with Indians (and indeed, all of their problems, period) at a stroke. Thus Bacon directed most of his energy against Indians rather than against other Virginians. His “rebellion” was a rearguard action, waged mainly when Berkeley loyalists went on the offensive. Granted, Bacon was not particularly talented at fighting Indians. After his surprise attack against the Occaneechees he scored only one other victory, over the Pamunkeys, and even that came largely by accident. The fact remains, however, that the rebels’ words and deeds were clear and consistent: their fight was against Indians. Fittingly, Bacon died while campaigning against Indians, not Berkeley’s men.
Bacon’s death in October 1676 and Berkeley’s death the following summer put an end to their personal problems, but did nothing to resolve the issues that were in play during the rebellion itself. There could be no real resolution to the conflict that did not, for better or for worse, resolve the Indians’ problems and the colonists’ problem with Indians. It remained to be seen how the Indians, from the Five Nations in the North to the numerous Carolina nations in the South, would withstand the combined onslaught of land-hungry planters, English slavers, and genocidal militias. Nor did the end of the rebellion put an end to Virginians’ troubles. Colonists, no closer to solving their political and economic problems than before, still believed that Indians were being coddled and allowed to threaten the colony.
MAP 3.1 Eastern North America, 1672–1705 (From James Rice, “Bacon’s Rebellion in Indian Country,”
Journal of American History [December 2014]. Map drawn by Rebecca Wrenn.)
The resolutions to these conflicts, which gradually unfolded during the quarter- century following the deaths of Bacon and Berkeley, came mostly at Indians’ expense. The three main forces driving this late seventeenth-century transition fell into place during and immediately after the rebellion: first, an expanding Indian slave trade in the Southeast; second, an unspoken compromise among Virginians over Indian policy; and third, the first stirrings of a sense among colonists that they were being confronted by a vast conspiracy involving the neighbor Indians, the Iroquois, and international Catholicism. The pressure from these developments built steadily from 1675 through the 1680s, until at last the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 resolved many of the tensions underlying Bacon’s Rebellion and cleared the way for a more lasting post- Baconite settlement.
Virginia’s Indian slave trade accelerated because of Bacon’s Rebellion. Virginia’s Assembly had placed certain restrictions on the enslavement of Indians in the 1650s and 1660s, but during the rebellion numerous Occaneechees, Pamunkeys, and other Indians were seized and sold into servitude. Provincial officials took advantage of these wartime circumstances to actively promote the expansion of Indian slavery in a 1676 statute that was periodically revised and strengthened over the next several decades. In a stroke of good luck for Virginia’s planters and Indian traders, this came at a moment when an accelerating cycle of warfare between Indian nations in the Southeast, together with epidemics and the disruptive effects of rivalries between European powers, was producing a sharp increase in the number of Indian captives available to be sold into slavery within Virginia or the West Indies. Between 30,000 and 50,000 southern Indians were enslaved by the British between 1670 and 1715. Entire peoples scattered and were integrated into more successful nations and confederacies, such as the Catawbas, Creeks, and Yamasees. Blank spaces appeared on the map, becoming buffer zones between a more limited number of larger Indian polities.^7 Not coincidently, this expansion in the Indian slave trade came after the supply of indentured servants from England had sharply contracted (in the 1660s), and before large numbers of enslaved Africans became available to Virginia planters (around 1700). Indian slavery ensured that planters would not be pressed to find a free-labor alternative to servitude or slavery, and thus served as a vital bridge between the old system of white indentured servitude and the slave society that would emerge in Virginia at the beginning of the eighteenth century. From 1670 and 1700, for instance,
40 percent of all slaves on the upper James River (where Bacon lived) were Indians, not Africans. Enslaved children in particular were disproportionately Indians: in most counties between one-third and one-half of young slaves were Indians.^8 What about the neighbor Indians, the nations within Virginia whose fate had been such a point of contention between rebels and loyalists? Postrebellion governors compromised with those who had supported Bacon’s call for a general Indian war. They allowed colonists to stir up as much trouble as they liked among distant southern nations and to profit from the increased flow of Indian slaves, but they also returned to the prerebellion strategy of treating the neighbor Indians as allies—a less costly way of proceeding that still effectively pressured and reduced Native populations by means of tools as varied as free-ranging colonial livestock in their fields, epidemics, surveyors’ instruments, small-scale but endemic personal violence, and the legal system.^9 Former rebels and sympathizers only reluctantly acquiesced in this compromise. Although they refrained from directly confronting their royal governors over the issue, postrebellion neo-Baconites indirectly worked to rid the colony of neighbor Indians by linking their campaign to the concurrent crisis in English religious and dynastic affairs. Bacon’s Rebellion coincided with a popular and parliamentary movement to prevent Charles II’s brother James, a Catholic, from succeeding him as king. Widespread antipopery led many people to hope that one of Charles II’s illegitimate sons, the dashing Duke of Monmouth, would claim the throne when Charles died. Thus Bacon’s men took comfort during the rebellion in rumors that they “need not fear the king,” whom Berkeley represented, “for the king was dead” and Monmouth was on the march. Monmouth, presumably, would regard his fellow rebels in Virginia as allies.^10 Late in 1676, while loyalist forces were finally gaining the upper hand over the rebels, an anonymous colonist penned a “Complaint from Heaven … out of Virginia and Maryland.” The planters whose sentiments found expression in this document believed that Bacon’s death marked only the end of the first act of “the late tragedy.” Berkeley (it was said) was not the real enemy, but rather the dupe of a far more sinister figure: Lord Baltimore, the proprietor of Maryland and a powerful Catholic with strong connections to Charles II and his brother James. Baltimore, they charged, had arranged a deadly alliance between the Indians, powerful English Catholics, the French (especially the Jesuit missionaries of New France), and the Pope himself, all joined together in a great conspiracy to destroy English Protestantism. That was what Bacon had been trying to prevent.^11 Persistent rumors of this far-flung plot gained momentum throughout the late 1670s
- For examples of Morgan’s influence in textbooks and synthetic works, see Alan Taylor, American Colonies (New York: Viking, 2001), 243; and the current market- leading textbook, Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History , 3rd Seagull ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012) 102–4.
- [T. M.], “The Beginning, Progress, and Conclusion of Bacon’s Rebellion, 1675– 1676,” in Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675–1690 , ed. Charles M. Andrews (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), 8–9. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized.
- Rice, Tales , 13–16.
- The following account is summarized from Rice, Tales , chaps. 1–7.
- C. S. Everett, “‘They Shalbe Slaves for their lives’: Indian Slavery in Colonial Virginia,” in Indian Slavery in Colonial America , ed. Alan Gallay (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 67–107; Rice, Tales , 146–48, 163–64, 192–96, 199–201, 211–15.
- John Coombs, “Beyond the Origins Debate: Rethinking the Rise of Virginia Slavery,” in Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion , ed. Douglas Bradburn and John C. Coombs (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 240–78; Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom , 330.
- For detailed analyses of these processes, see Helen Rountree, Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), chaps. 5–6; and James D. Rice, Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), chaps. 6–7.
- Herbert Paschal, ed., “George Bancroft’s ‘Lost Notes’ on the General Court Records of Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 91, no. 3 (1983): 356 (quotation).
- “Complaint from Heaven with a Huy and crye and a petition out of Virginia and Maryland,” C.O. 1/36, 213–18, Virginia Colonial Records Project (Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia), Reel 92. An error-ridden transcription is published in William Hand Browne et al., eds., Archives of Maryland , 72 vols. (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1883–1972), 5:134–52.
- Daniel Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1992), 145; Rice, Nature and History , chaps. 8–11.
- Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 1–54; Owen Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Rice, Tales , chaps. 8–10.
- Stephen Saunders Webb, “The Strange Career of Francis Nicholson,” William and Mary Quarterly 23, no. 4 (1966): 513–48; Rountree, Pocahontas’s People , 105–27; Rice, Nature and History , chap. 9.
- Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse , chap. 9; Warren Hofstra, The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Paul Kelton, Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492–1715 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), chap. 4; Robbie Ethridge, From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540–1715 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), chap. 5; Coombs, “Beyond the Origins Debate.”
Suggested Readings
Andrews, Charles, ed. Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675–1690. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915. Brown, Kathleen. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975. Rice, James D. Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Washburn, Wilcomb. The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton, 1957.
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