Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Before we start today's episode, we wanted to
Speaker 1: let you know that Stuff you Missed in History Class
Speaker 1: has been nominated for a Webby Award this year. We've
Speaker 1: been nominated for Best Writing in the Podcast category. You
Speaker 1: can vote by going to Webby Awards dot com. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to get to the actual fighting part
Speaker 1: of Bacon's rebellion. And if you have not listened to
Speaker 1: our previous episode, which did not it included some off
Speaker 1: screen fighting in the form of things like the Anglo
Speaker 1: Dutch Wars, but uh, that one did not have as
Speaker 1: much direct conflict. And if you have not listened to
Speaker 1: that one, this one might make sense on a very
Speaker 1: basic level. But there is just there's so much context
Speaker 1: for this incident that we are not covering. We're not
Speaker 1: going to repeat all those things today, so I recommend
Speaker 1: the other one before this one. And last time, we
Speaker 1: talked about the many reasons Virginia colonists were frustrated by
Speaker 1: the sixteen seventies many of which were connected to the
Speaker 1: price of tobacco, taxation, and disparities between the richest and
Speaker 1: most prominent colonists and basically everyone else. But none of
Speaker 1: those issues were the spark that started the rebellion. Instead,
Speaker 1: it was the difference between how the colony was responding
Speaker 1: to native people and how the colonists thought the colony
Speaker 1: should respond. The treaty that had ended the Third Anglo
Speaker 1: Palatan War had drawn a clear boundary between the colony
Speaker 1: and the Palatin Confederacy, but as more colonists came to Virginia,
Speaker 1: they started moving closer and closer to that line, and
Speaker 1: then eventually across it into what was supposed to be
Speaker 1: the Confederacy's territory. Also, not every tribe and nation in
Speaker 1: the area was a party to this treaty. The Poetan
Speaker 1: Confederacy was an alliance of Algonquin speaking tribes, but not
Speaker 1: every Algonquin tribe was part of the confederacy, and Algonquin
Speaker 1: speaking tribes were not the only tribes in the region.
Speaker 1: In terms of just the tribes that were either part
Speaker 1: of or affected by Bacon's rebellion in some way, there
Speaker 1: were at least twelve representing three different language groups. And
Speaker 1: that is also there were more than twelve tribes and
Speaker 1: nations in the area. That's that's I cannot stress enough that,
Speaker 1: like North America, was a hugely diverse place with a
Speaker 1: lot of individual tribes and nations long before Europeans ever
Speaker 1: got to it. So in my sixteen seventy five, most
Speaker 1: of the colonists in Virginia's more inland areas were really
Speaker 1: wary of the native people, and some of them felt
Speaker 1: threatened by their proximity. This was especially true after they
Speaker 1: started hearing about King Philip's War, which had started in
Speaker 1: New England that year. Others just thought the native people
Speaker 1: were in the way of colonial expansion, or that the
Speaker 1: College and He's trade with Native nations was taking opportunities
Speaker 1: away from Europeans. Native people also became scapegoats for a
Speaker 1: lot of the colonists frustrations that just did not have
Speaker 1: anything to do with them, with some colonists even going
Speaker 1: so far as blaming some kind of native sorcery for
Speaker 1: bad weather that ruined the tobacco crop. Regardless of their
Speaker 1: exact motivations, though, the prevailing sentiment among the colonists was
Speaker 1: that the native population needed to go. In July of
Speaker 1: sixty five, members of the Algonquin speaking Doeg people were
Speaker 1: caught up in an ongoing trading dispute with Virginia planter
Speaker 1: Thomas Matthews. Eventually, several Doeg's rated Matthew's plantation, and Matthew's
Speaker 1: herdsman killed at least one of them before dying of
Speaker 1: his own injuries. This led to a series of back
Speaker 1: and forth retaliations between the colonists and the Doegs, which
Speaker 1: ultimately involved the Virginia Militia and at times crossed into
Speaker 1: neighboring Maryland. It was across the border in Maryland that
Speaker 1: the militia wrongly attacked a completely different tribe who had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with this situation. This was the Iroquois
Speaker 1: speaking Susquehannas. The militia killed fourteen Susquehanna hunters, attacking them
Speaker 1: while they were asleep in a cabin. The Doeg hunters
Speaker 1: that the militia was actually trying to go after, was
Speaker 1: in a different cabin that was not far away. The
Speaker 1: Susquehannas had previously maintained an alliance with the Virginia Colony,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't just allow the killing of fourteen people
Speaker 1: to go unanswered. They killed two colonists, along with killing
Speaker 1: some livestock and destroying crops before contacting Governor Berkeley to
Speaker 1: negotiate for peace. Berkeley did not want another large scale
Speaker 1: war with the native population. He thought that it would
Speaker 1: be expensive and destructive, and that it would disrupt a
Speaker 1: profitable fur trade that he had established with some of
Speaker 1: the region's tribes. He was also concerned that a violent
Speaker 1: confrontation with one tribe might unite others in the area
Speaker 1: against the colonists, regardless of whether they were allies or
Speaker 1: enemies before that point. But the colonists and many of
Speaker 1: the militia had no patience for caution. They wanted the
Speaker 1: perceived native threat to be removed entirely. A volunteer militia
Speaker 1: continued to attack Native people without much regard at all
Speaker 1: for who they were actually fighting, and they lay siege
Speaker 1: to Afford, where the Susquehannics had taken refuge. When several
Speaker 1: Susquehanna leaders left under a flag of truce to try
Speaker 1: to negotiate with the governor, the militia killed them, and
Speaker 1: this led to an outright war between the Susquehannas and
Speaker 1: the colony. Yeah, Berkeley and this whole scenario. Berkeley is
Speaker 1: the person that like differentiated the idea that there were
Speaker 1: multiple different Native people's and that they were not one monolith. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily because he was magnanimous or enlightened, but because
Speaker 1: he was the person that was responsible for maintaining a
Speaker 1: lot of these relationships. But the colonists, as a general rule,
Speaker 1: thought that like all Native people were the same and
Speaker 1: needed to be treated the same, and the same treatment
Speaker 1: in this case was to get rid of them. And
Speaker 1: that's where Nathaniel Bacon Jr. Finally comes into this picture
Speaker 1: after more than one entire episode about the rebellion name
Speaker 1: for him. He was twenty nine years old and he
Speaker 1: had arrived in the colony a couple of years before.
Speaker 1: He was also Governor Berkeley's cousin by marriage, and he
Speaker 1: had been given a seat on the Governor's council because
Speaker 1: of that family connection in his family's prominence, but he
Speaker 1: was also kind of a troublemaker. He had married a
Speaker 1: woman without her father's consent, and then he had allegedly
Speaker 1: tried to cheat a neighbor in England out of his inheritance.
Speaker 1: So his father, Nathaniel Bacon Senior, had paid for his
Speaker 1: son to go to Virginia and the hope that he
Speaker 1: would maybe gain some maturity and some wisdom there. Ah
Speaker 1: should be obvious that's not what happened. Spoiler alert, not
Speaker 1: so much. One of the younger Bacon's plantations was at
Speaker 1: the head of the Orc River, and it was there
Speaker 1: that a native fighting force it is not clear from
Speaker 1: which tribe killed his overseer and one of his servants.
Speaker 1: Bacon swore to avenge their deaths. A growing volunteer militia
Speaker 1: made up of free farmers, European and African, indentured workers
Speaker 1: and enslaved Africans made him its leader. Yeah. The the
Speaker 1: makeup of that militia is why we spent so much
Speaker 1: time talking about indentured workers and enslaved people in the
Speaker 1: previous episode, because they all united together as part of
Speaker 1: this force. In seventeen o four, historian Robert Beverly described
Speaker 1: this militia and Bacon's involvement this way quote. At first
Speaker 1: they flocked together, tumultuously, running in troops from one plantation
Speaker 1: to another without a head, until at last the seditious
Speaker 1: humor of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon led him to be of
Speaker 1: the party. This gentleman had been brought up at one
Speaker 1: of the ends of court in England. He had a
Speaker 1: moderate fortune. He was young, bold, active of an inviting aspect,
Speaker 1: and powerful elocution. In a word, he was in every
Speaker 1: way qualified to head a giddy and unthinking multitude. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about what the giddy and unthinking multitude
Speaker 1: did after we first paused for a sponsor break. Nathaniel
Speaker 1: Bacon Jr. Was one of the many Virginia colonists who
Speaker 1: thought that the native population needed to be eliminated entirely,
Speaker 1: and his own words, one of his goals was quote
Speaker 1: not only to ruin and extirpate all Indians in general,
Speaker 1: but all manner of trade and commerce with them. But
Speaker 1: this wasn't just Bacon and the rebels attacking native people.
Speaker 1: The tribes themselves already had their own conflicts and divisions,
Speaker 1: and Bacon took advantage of those conflicts to wage his campaign.
Speaker 1: As one example, as a situation between the Susquehannics and
Speaker 1: the colonists had become more violent, the Susquehannics had needed
Speaker 1: to increase their numbers, so they pressured the members of
Speaker 1: other nearby nations described in records from the time as
Speaker 1: Monacan and an Electin to join them at their fort. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: another tribe, the Okanici, saw the conflict between the Susquehannas
Speaker 1: and the colonists as an opportunity to get rid of
Speaker 1: one of their rivals for territory and trade. The okan
Speaker 1: Echis colluded with the colonists and with the Monacan and
Speaker 1: an Electin, who all attacked the Susquehannics inside the fort
Speaker 1: where they were staying. Yeah, the okan Echi has made
Speaker 1: almost h like a Trojan Horse kind of situation where
Speaker 1: they persuaded these people who were taking shelter with the
Speaker 1: Susquehanna tow to rise up against them from within. But uh,
Speaker 1: the Okanicis having done this did not lead the colonists
Speaker 1: to form some kind of ongoing alliance with them or
Speaker 1: to offer them any sort of protection. When the okan
Speaker 1: Echis went back to Bacon with news of their victory
Speaker 1: over the Susqua Hannock's, Bacon's force attacked them too, killing
Speaker 1: more than a hundred people and destroying their primary village.
Speaker 1: After all of these events, the surviving Oknicies and Susquehannocks
Speaker 1: each separately fled toward North Carolina. Meanwhile, Governor Berkeley, who
Speaker 1: had warned Bacon that his actions constituted mutiny, ejected Bacon
Speaker 1: from his council and declared him an outlaw. Then he
Speaker 1: dissolved the House of Burgesses and called for a new election,
Speaker 1: and proposed that when the new assembly convened, it should
Speaker 1: call for a new colonial governor. In this election, Henrico
Speaker 1: County elected Nathaniel Bacon is one of its burgesses. It's
Speaker 1: not clear how many of the votes came from people
Speaker 1: who legitimately agreed with his methods, though I mean he
Speaker 1: had a lot of support among the like the poor
Speaker 1: farmers and the indentured people and the enslaved people. He
Speaker 1: did not have a lot of support among the rich people,
Speaker 1: who at this point were the ones who could vote.
Speaker 1: But there wasn't a printing press in Jamia at this time,
Speaker 1: so news was spread by somebody carrying a message physically
Speaker 1: into town and reading the message out loud at the
Speaker 1: courthouse steps. Bacon's militia and Henrico County had prevented the
Speaker 1: messenger from reading the proclamation that had declared him an outlaw,
Speaker 1: so it's possible that people voting in this election didn't
Speaker 1: even know about it, and it's also possible that his
Speaker 1: militia intimidated voters on election day. When Bacon arrived to
Speaker 1: join the Assembly on June six, sixty six, he was
Speaker 1: captured and forced to apologize and denounce his actions before
Speaker 1: he was allowed to take his seat. After he had
Speaker 1: done that, he was also restored to the Governor's council. Then,
Speaker 1: Bacon asked for a commission in the army that the
Speaker 1: Assembly had decided to raise to fight the Susquehannics. The
Speaker 1: Assembly denied him this request, and after some arguing about it,
Speaker 1: the governor ejected him from the council that he had
Speaker 1: just been reinstated too. So Bacon left and then on
Speaker 1: June twenty three, he came back to Jamestown with five
Speaker 1: hundred armed men. They surround founded the building where the
Speaker 1: Assembly was meeting, and then Bacon threatened them in an
Speaker 1: extremely dramatic confrontation that culminated with the governor baring his
Speaker 1: chest and daring Bacon to shoot him. Bacon did not
Speaker 1: shoot him, but he did manage to extort the commission
Speaker 1: that he wanted from the Assembly. In general, the Assembly
Speaker 1: did not think fondly of Bacon at all, but he
Speaker 1: had the building surrounded with fusiliers. Not only did they
Speaker 1: make him commander in chief of the army, but they
Speaker 1: also pardoned him for everything that he had done since
Speaker 1: the start of March. And with that, Bacon left again
Speaker 1: to continue fighting. Yeah, he managed to extort a whole
Speaker 1: lot of stuff out of the Assembly that day. The
Speaker 1: Assembly went on meeting after he left and adjourned on June,
Speaker 1: and by that point had passed a whole series of
Speaker 1: reforms to try to address some of the issues that
Speaker 1: had become sources of frustration. These reforms required, for example,
Speaker 1: that the office of sheriff be rotated annually, so one
Speaker 1: person could not become sheriff and stay there forever and
Speaker 1: abuse his power. The new laws also forbade people from
Speaker 1: holding multiple offices at once. That came up in our
Speaker 1: episode on the regulator wars, where one person would be
Speaker 1: like the register of deeds and the sheriff and some
Speaker 1: other thing like this was happening in Virginia two. The
Speaker 1: Assembly also addressed some of the colonists frustration with taxes
Speaker 1: and fees. They abolished the tax exemption that had applied
Speaker 1: to members of the Governor's Council, and they banned two
Speaker 1: people who had reputations for abusing their power from ever
Speaker 1: holding public office again. The Assembly also repealed that sixteen
Speaker 1: seventy act that had disenfranchised landless people, so they restored
Speaker 1: lots of people's rights to vote. Meanwhile, as the Army's
Speaker 1: commander in chief, Bacon continued his indiscriminate fighting against the
Speaker 1: native people of the Chesapeake Bay Area. He also made
Speaker 1: exorbitant requests for funding for his fighting force. This led
Speaker 1: Governor Berkeley to denounce him as a rebel and a
Speaker 1: tree leader again, which led Bacon to issue a manifesto
Speaker 1: of his own denouncing the governor. Strangely, a whole lot
Speaker 1: of the grievances spelled out in Bacon's manifesto were things
Speaker 1: that had just been addressed by the Assembly. He wrote
Speaker 1: a whole lot about unjust taxes and about the governor
Speaker 1: of playing favorites with his judicial appointments. The several of
Speaker 1: the points that he made were literally things that had
Speaker 1: just been reversed by the Assembly. And then, of course
Speaker 1: there's also a lot about the Native people. Bacon cites
Speaker 1: the Native involvement in the beaver trade as a problem,
Speaker 1: and he denounces the governor quote for having protected, favored,
Speaker 1: and emboldened the Indians against his Majesty's loyal subjects, never contriving, requiring,
Speaker 1: or appointing any do or proper means of satisfaction for
Speaker 1: their many invasions, robberies, and murders committed upon us. The
Speaker 1: manifesto also criticizes Governor Berkeley for having pulled the English
Speaker 1: army back from the fight, leaving the Native people, to
Speaker 1: quote bur Spoil and murther, I really like all the
Speaker 1: murdering that he talks about. Having thus denounced the Governor
Speaker 1: at length, Bacon turned the army against the Pamunkey tribe.
Speaker 1: Not only had the Pamunkey been allied with the Colony
Speaker 1: since the end of the Third Anglo poet In War,
Speaker 1: but they had also signed a treaty with the Colony
Speaker 1: just a few months before, after its leader Kakakoeski, had
Speaker 1: agreed to provide about a dozen men for the Colony's
Speaker 1: war effort. Bacon's force massacred at least fifty members of
Speaker 1: the tribe and captured others. From there, Bacon turned his
Speaker 1: attention toward trying to track down the governor, who had
Speaker 1: left the capital of Jamestown. To try to recruit more
Speaker 1: men for a fighting force of his own. Bacon had
Speaker 1: a small navy which found and attacked the governor's fleet
Speaker 1: on Virginia's eastern shore. That's that little strip of land
Speaker 1: in northeast Virginia that's separated from the rest by Chesapeake Bay.
Speaker 1: The governor and his loyalist force won this battle, and
Speaker 1: they hanged several of Bacon's officers. Then both Bacon and
Speaker 1: Berkeley started moving back towards Jamestown. Berkeley got there first
Speaker 1: on September eight, but then Bacon arrived and lay siege
Speaker 1: to the city for ten days, at which point Berkeley
Speaker 1: and those still loyal to him fled. The rebels burned
Speaker 1: Jamestown on September nineteen. As Bacon started to gain the
Speaker 1: upper hand, more and more prominent Virginians started taking his
Speaker 1: side in the dispute. With Jamestown destroyed, Bacon went back
Speaker 1: to the Virginia frontier to try to search for any
Speaker 1: Native people that they hadn't already fought, and some of
Speaker 1: his force went on the hunt for people who were
Speaker 1: loyal to the governor. These two forces probably would have
Speaker 1: done a whole lot more damage. But then Bacon died
Speaker 1: on October six, seventy six, of what was described as
Speaker 1: the Bloody Flux. This is probably a combination of Typhus
Speaker 1: and Dysenterry. A day later, having no idea of Bacon's death,
Speaker 1: King Charles the Second issued a proclamation ordering that the
Speaker 1: rebellion be put down. It took about two more months
Speaker 1: of heavy fighting for the governor to finally regain control
Speaker 1: of the colony. For much of November, rebel forces controlled
Speaker 1: nearly all of the colony outside the eastern Shore, but
Speaker 1: in the end, after huge casualties on both sides, Governor
Speaker 1: Berkeley did manage to regain control of the colony. In
Speaker 1: addition to the people killed in the fighting, Berkeley executed
Speaker 1: twenty three of the rebellion's leaders. He also confiscated land
Speaker 1: and corn for many of the ones who had survived,
Speaker 1: and then he returned to Jamestown on January sixteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: A week later, three commissioners who had been dispatched from
Speaker 1: England at the end of the previous year arrived. After
Speaker 1: the proclamation from the King. Francis Morrison, Sir John Barry,
Speaker 1: and Colonel Herbert Jeffreys had been sent to put down
Speaker 1: the rebellion and to investigate what happened, and they had
Speaker 1: about one thousand soldiers with him by that point. Though
Speaker 1: the rebellion was over, this whole investigation was a frustrating
Speaker 1: and rasment for Berkeley. He was about seventy years old
Speaker 1: and he had lost most of his hearings, so the
Speaker 1: questioning was difficult and it tended to escalate into both
Speaker 1: sides shouting at each other. But instead of being praised
Speaker 1: for restoring order, Berkeley was being investigated, and the investigation
Speaker 1: found that his treatment of the rebels that he had
Speaker 1: put into play with all the hangings and confiscations was
Speaker 1: overly harsh. As the commissioners were leaving, there was one
Speaker 1: last incident described by one of the commissioner's clerks as
Speaker 1: quote the occasion of the scandalous postilion. Governor Berkeley's wife, Francis,
Speaker 1: had arranged a carriage to take the commissioners back to
Speaker 1: their barge. As they approached the carriage, an African man
Speaker 1: replaced the coaches postilion. That was someone who rode along
Speaker 1: as a guide, and in this case may have also
Speaker 1: been the coaches driver, which wasn't entirely clear. The commissioners,
Speaker 1: having seen this happen, declined to get into the carriage,
Speaker 1: apparently they did not want to ride in the carriage
Speaker 1: that had just been given an African postilion, but the
Speaker 1: carriage followed them all the way to the river anyway.
Speaker 1: The commissioners later learned that this replacement postilion was one
Speaker 1: of the colonies hangman. It's possible that he wasn't really
Speaker 1: the hangman, but that this was a rumor. If it
Speaker 1: was a rumor, it was definitely a rumor that they believed.
Speaker 1: So there is a lot going on with this story,
Speaker 1: including that an African man was presumably entrusted with executing
Speaker 1: Europeans in the colony, and that the governor's wife seems
Speaker 1: to have arranged this as a spectacle to insult the commissioners.
Speaker 1: Historian Susan Westbury argued in the two thousand four paper
Speaker 1: that this was an example of Frances putting her political
Speaker 1: power as the governor's wife to use to try to
Speaker 1: support her husband. Probably did not help things. Though her
Speaker 1: husband was removed from office, he was summoned back to
Speaker 1: England to answer for what he had done, But then
Speaker 1: he died on July night, six seventy seven, before he
Speaker 1: had had the chance to give his account to the King.
Speaker 1: We have other accounts, though, including one written by a
Speaker 1: Mrs Ann Cotton in sixty eight six. Thomas Matthews, whose
Speaker 1: dispute with the doeg had helped start this whole thing,
Speaker 1: also wrote an account of it thirty years later at
Speaker 1: the request of the First Earl of Oxford, Robert Harley,
Speaker 1: who at the time it was written with Secretary of
Speaker 1: State under Queen Anne. It's a mostly straightforward account, ending
Speaker 1: with Matthew's opinion that Bacon and his supporters were quote wheels,
Speaker 1: agitated by the weight of his former and present resentments
Speaker 1: after their cohler was raised up to a very high
Speaker 1: pitch at having been so long and so often trifled with,
Speaker 1: on their humble supplications to the Governor for his immediate
Speaker 1: taking in hand the most speedy means towards stopping the
Speaker 1: continued effusions of so much English blood from time to
Speaker 1: time by the Indians. In other words, a bunch of
Speaker 1: frustrated people were mad at the governor for ignoring their
Speaker 1: request to stop the native people, but it's so much
Speaker 1: more florid the other way. The king and his ministers
Speaker 1: repealed most of the reforms that had been passed by
Speaker 1: the sixteen seventy six Assembly. So from that perspective, a
Speaker 1: lot of things went back to the way they were before.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, a lot changed in Virginia
Speaker 1: after this rebellion, and we're going to get to all
Speaker 1: of that after we have one more break from one
Speaker 1: of the sponsors that keeps the show going. After Bacon's
Speaker 1: rebellion was over, England negotiated a new treaty with several
Speaker 1: of the native tribes that had been affected by it,
Speaker 1: and this became known as the Treaty of Middle Plantation,
Speaker 1: which was signed on May sixteen, seventy seven. It acknowledged
Speaker 1: that all this fighting had started with quote violent intrusions
Speaker 1: made by the colonists against the tribes. The tribes who
Speaker 1: signed this treaty gave up their sovereignty and became subjects
Speaker 1: of the monarch in exchange for peace and protection. Under
Speaker 1: the terms of this treaty, each quote Indian king and
Speaker 1: queen had equal power to govern their own people, while
Speaker 1: also giving kaka Koweski, described in the treaty as the
Speaker 1: queen of Monkey authority over several other tribes. At least
Speaker 1: one of these tribes refused to be placed under her leadership.
Speaker 1: Though yeah, this was these were tribes that had previously
Speaker 1: been sort of under the jurisdiction of the Monkey, and
Speaker 1: they were like, we we were free of that. We
Speaker 1: don't need to go back to that anymore. Under the
Speaker 1: Treaty of Middle Plantation, the native parties to the treaty
Speaker 1: were supposed to pay three arrows per year along with
Speaker 1: twenty beaver skins, and they were given the right to hunt,
Speaker 1: to fish, and to gather. They were supposed to have
Speaker 1: adequate land available to them, and they also had to
Speaker 1: agree to side with the colony against quote foreign Indians
Speaker 1: who were not party to the treaty if there was
Speaker 1: some kind of violent conflict with them. Overall, this document
Speaker 1: seems to attempt to treat fairly with the native people's
Speaker 1: but at the same time it did require the ones
Speaker 1: that had not already become tributaries to the English to
Speaker 1: give up their sovereign team. And as the colonies and
Speaker 1: later the U. S government's native policy became more and
Speaker 1: more similar to what Nathaniel Bacon had been advocating, its
Speaker 1: terms weren't really honored. They were also increasingly undermined by
Speaker 1: anti Native laws, such as laws that prohibited Native people
Speaker 1: from testifying in court. Another big change that followed this
Speaker 1: was in the colony's labor. So Nathaniel Bacon, who was
Speaker 1: a wealthy newcomer to the colony, managed to lead a
Speaker 1: rebellion that was mostly made up of the colonies lower classes,
Speaker 1: small free planters, indentured workers of all races, and enslaved Africans,
Speaker 1: and they had all come together to fight against a
Speaker 1: perceived Native threat and then ultimately to turn against the
Speaker 1: colonial government. And the colonial elite saw this uniting of
Speaker 1: all the lower classes together as a huge threat, so
Speaker 1: after this, the Assembly passed a series of laws separating
Speaker 1: the white and black population. Laws that specifically addressed the
Speaker 1: African population and enslaved Africans in which prohibited interracial marriages.
Speaker 1: Laws that allowed a person to be freed if they
Speaker 1: could prove that they were baptized were abolished. The law
Speaker 1: increasingly made divisions between black and white and slave and free.
Speaker 1: The colony also focused less and less on using indentured
Speaker 1: workers and more and more on enslaved workers. Some of
Speaker 1: this was part of an ongoing trend, but some of
Speaker 1: it was also a deliberate effort to move toward using
Speaker 1: slavery rather than indenture, because permanently enslaved people were considered
Speaker 1: to be more easily controlled. But there were other factors
Speaker 1: as well, including economic changes in England that made it
Speaker 1: more expensive to negotiate indentures. And then of course word
Speaker 1: also got back to Europe. There was less and less
Speaker 1: available land in North America. There were all kinds of
Speaker 1: conflicts going on. Things the idea of immigrating became less
Speaker 1: attractive to a lot of people. So Bacon's rebellion accelerated
Speaker 1: a shift that was already under way. In sixteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: years after the rebellion ended, seven percent of the population
Speaker 1: and of Virginia and nearby Maryland were enslaved Africans. In
Speaker 1: twenty years that rose too. In seventeen oh five, the
Speaker 1: General Assembly passed an Act concerning Servants and Slaves, which
Speaker 1: freed indentured servants at the age of twenty four while
Speaker 1: codifying various aspects of slavery. This included outlawing resistance against
Speaker 1: white Christians by quote Negroes, Mulatto's, Indians, and others, and
Speaker 1: absolving enslavers from guilt if they killed a slave while
Speaker 1: administering punishment. The shift also affected the enslavement of Native Americans,
Speaker 1: and some of it was just a matter of numbers.
Speaker 1: By the late seventeenth century, as the Transatlantic slave trade
Speaker 1: was bringing more and more Africans to North America, there
Speaker 1: was less and less demand for enslaved Native Americans because
Speaker 1: there were just a lot more Africans available. The law
Speaker 1: on this continued to be kind of scattered, with the
Speaker 1: General Assembly confirming that it was legal to enslave Native
Speaker 1: Americans in sixteen eighty two and then passing an act
Speaker 1: that said the opposite a year later. The Assembly also
Speaker 1: used a law that had been passed back in sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, so before the rebellion, to sell an entire
Speaker 1: community into slavery in the Caribbean and retaliation for one
Speaker 1: murder that happened in seventeen oh five. A series of
Speaker 1: court cases towards the end of the seventeen hundreds and
Speaker 1: into eighteen hundred ruled that Native people were free, and
Speaker 1: as was the case with enslavement, passing from an African
Speaker 1: mother to her children, that freedom passed from a Native
Speaker 1: mother to her children. None of this happened overnight, and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of overlamp in the progression of
Speaker 1: indentured servitude and slavery in Virginia, But overall, Bacon's rebellion
Speaker 1: accelerated those trends, leading the colony to turn to slavery
Speaker 1: more than indenture into enslaved Africans more than Native Americans,
Speaker 1: until finally virtually all of the enslaved labor in the
Speaker 1: colony was African, and slavery was viewed as something specific
Speaker 1: to Africans and people of freaking descent. But none of
Speaker 1: this is how people thought about Bacon's rebellion in the
Speaker 1: years after it happened. This was especially true after the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War, which started a hundred years later, and the
Speaker 1: wake of the Revolutionary War, people started thinking of Bacon's
Speaker 1: rebellion almost as a dress rehearsal to the revolution. A
Speaker 1: big proponent of this idea was Thomas Jefferson, who got
Speaker 1: a copy of Thomas Matthew's account in eighteen o three.
Speaker 1: Jefferson arranged for this account to be printed in the
Speaker 1: Richmond Inquirer in eighteen o four, along with his introduction,
Speaker 1: which read, in part quote, if this little book speaks
Speaker 1: the truth, Nathaniel Bacon will be no longer regarded as
Speaker 1: a rebel, but as a patriot. His name will be
Speaker 1: rescued from the infamy which has adhered to it for
Speaker 1: more than a century. The stigma of corruption, cruelty, and
Speaker 1: treachery will be fixed on the administration by which he
Speaker 1: was condemned, And one more case will be added to
Speaker 1: those which prove that insurrections proceed oftener from the misconduct
Speaker 1: of those in power than from the fact is and
Speaker 1: turbulent temper of the people. This view that Bacon was
Speaker 1: a hero instead of a trader, and that the rebellion
Speaker 1: was an uprising against tyranny instead of a mutiny persisted
Speaker 1: for a really long time. A man named Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: Wurtenbacher wrote a book in nineteen forty that described Bacon
Speaker 1: as a patriotic hero. One of the essays that I
Speaker 1: read while researching this described this book as quote one
Speaker 1: of the worst books on Virginia their reputable scholarly historian
Speaker 1: ever published, and even in recent articles that acknowledge some
Speaker 1: of the context to all of this. There is a
Speaker 1: startling amount of phrasing that suggests that Berkeley was to
Speaker 1: blame because he ignored what the colonists wanted, which was
Speaker 1: to get rid of the native population. Yeah, that one
Speaker 1: of the first I have access to, like all kinds
Speaker 1: of encyclopedia type resources through various libraries, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times that's where I will sort of start with
Speaker 1: either a refresher or some background information or type of thing.
Speaker 1: And there was one that was sort of the two
Speaker 1: paragraph summary of Bacon's rebellion that really made it sound like, well,
Speaker 1: if the governor had just done what the colonists asked
Speaker 1: him to do, it would have been avoided. And I
Speaker 1: was like, the governor or, the colonists are asking him
Speaker 1: to exterminate people. That just doesn't seem like a great
Speaker 1: conclusion to be drawing in this thing that was written
Speaker 1: within the last two decades. Ye, what's your scoop? On
Speaker 1: listener mail? More uplifting? It is definitely more fun. It
Speaker 1: is from Greg. Greg says Hi tracing Holly as a
Speaker 1: long time listener. I thought I'd right to let you
Speaker 1: know what an interesting podcast you did on Sappo My
Speaker 1: family History traces its roots to the Greek mainland and
Speaker 1: to Armenia. A great many years ago, my parents took
Speaker 1: the family on a summer vacation to Europe, spending some
Speaker 1: time driving around the continent, including a sailboat cruise along
Speaker 1: some of the Greek islands. That cruise ran into some weather,
Speaker 1: and to avoid becoming a sequel to Gilligan's Island, we
Speaker 1: took ref in the port of one of the smaller,
Speaker 1: non touristy islands for a few days. That gave us
Speaker 1: a chance to wander it's quite narrow streets and local
Speaker 1: restaurants without the crowds and commotion that accompany the more
Speaker 1: popular destinations. Listening to your podcast brought back some memories
Speaker 1: of that wonderful trip, and I found myself on Google
Speaker 1: street View wandering around the streets of the island of
Speaker 1: Les Bus as Sappho might have done while listening to
Speaker 1: you read her poetry. I suppose, though the architecture might
Speaker 1: have been just a little different back then. Keep up
Speaker 1: the good work, Greg. Thank you Greg for this note.
Speaker 1: I love that idea of using Google street View to
Speaker 1: kind of go visit a place that you're hearing about
Speaker 1: on the podcast. I also love the Greek spelling slash
Speaker 1: pronunciation of les bus there because it's definitely a be
Speaker 1: in English. But apparently if you go to Greece they
Speaker 1: will insist that that is not a B. So thank
Speaker 1: you Greg for sending us that note. That is a
Speaker 1: pretty ingenious thing to do. I have to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have used I mean, I make use of Google
Speaker 1: street View a lot for all kinds of you know,
Speaker 1: is it is there a sidewalk this place? I am
Speaker 1: planning to walk that kind of thing, um, but like this,
Speaker 1: using it to sort of see what's this place like
Speaker 1: now in this podcast I'm listening to. That sounds really cool.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcast or in history podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and then we're all over social
Speaker 1: media Missed in History. That's where you will find our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and Twitter. You can come to our website, which is
Speaker 1: missing history dot com, where there is a searchable archive
Speaker 1: of all the episodes we've done and show notes for
Speaker 1: the episodes Holly and I have worked on together. And
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to our show and Apple podcast, by
Speaker 1: heart radio app and anywhere else to get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
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