On July 30, 1676, Nathaniel Bacon issued a “Declaration of the People of Virginia”, a list of complaints against the colonial governor, William Berkeley.  Berkeley was accused of being corrupt and unjust in his taxation of the people of Virginia, and also chastised for failing to provide colonists protection of the people from certain tribes of American Indians. In 1776, these same complaints will be cited by Thomas Jefferson, as abuses by the King.  While Bacon is usually portrayed as a “man of the people” who led tenant farmers, indentured servants, and free Africans against Berkeley’s tyrannical rule, his “army,” which is better characterized as an unruly “mob” pitted laboring and servant classes against the colonial aristocracy and plantation owners in the hope of settling a grudge.

Bacon’s family was part of that aristocracy.  His family was landed gentry and his father was a member of parliament.  Bacon himself studied law at Cambridge, travelled extensively, and married the daughter of Sir Edward Duke of Benhall.  He was poised as the only son of the Bacon family, to inherit a life of privilege and power but his father sent him to the Americas to avoid a scandal that would harm his (the father’s) political career.  Bacon was sent to Virginia because he was accused of cheating another man out of an inheritance.  To avoid the scandal of trial, his father packed him off to the Virginia colony, providing him with 1,800 pounds (more than $500,000 in modern terms), which Bacon used to purchase two plantations and set himself up in Jamestown, where he should soon become a member of Governor Berkeley’s council but Bacon was shunned by the established members of the colonial elite. 

By the time Bacon arrived, the Jamestown (established 1607) was already seventy years old and entering its third generation of native Virginia colonists.  Those who had devoted their lives to building and growing the colony were suspicious of newcomers like Bacon who planned to purchase their positions rather than earning them.  Governor Berkeley showed him no favoritism and Bacon was prevented from expand his land holdings through encroachment of the lands of allied Indian tribes.  Like many of the landless settlers that had come to the colony, he found land close into the Tidewater region became scarce and unobtainable.  The colonial authorities opposed the expansion of settlement further up the James as treaties with certain native tribes created a buffer between the English other Indian tribes further inland who saw the English as unwanted invaders. 

Bacon wanted to wage war on the Indian tribes, take their land by force and “extirpate all Indians in General.”  He saw the friction between the landless masses and the Governor as a means of achieving power.  Once he had garnered enough disaffected supporters, he marched on Jamestown, forcing Berkeley to flee and setting fire to the settlement.  The militia was dispatched from Hampton Roads in support of Berkley and order was quickly restored but the resentment was not quelled. 

Two years later, an overseer at one of his plantations was allegedly killed by two Indians.  Bacon sought permission to lead the militia on a retaliatory raid.  Berkeley, mindful of the Jamestown incident, refused.  When a rumor spread that another Indian raid was being planned, Berkeley again refused to call of the militia and denied Bacon’s request to be granted a Colonel’s commission.  Without any authority, Bacon went out to a camp of farmers and others workers and was in an election fueled by a generous a quantity of brandy, was elected leader of a people’s militia. Against Berkeley’s orders, this group attached a settlement of Occaneechi people whose warriors were raiding the Susquehannock.  Bacon’s militia murdered most of the Occaneechi men, women, and children remaining at the village.

Bacon’s militia then marched on the assembled burgesses.  On July 30, 1676, Bacon and his army issued the “Declaration of the People”. The declaration criticized Berkeley’s administration in detail. It leveled several accusations against Berkeley:

• that “upon specious pretense of public works [he] raised great unjust taxes upon the commonality”;
• that he advanced favorites to high public offices;
• that he monopolized the beaver trade with the Native Americans;
• that he was pro-Native American.

They then captured and burned the colonial capital on September 19 forcing Berkeley to retreat across the river. Word of this rebellion had been sent to England and a Royal Navy squadron was dispatched but before it arrived in Jamestown, Bacon suddenly died.  John Ingram took command of Bacon’s militia he lacked Bacon’s ability to stir populist sentiment.  Supported by the merchant ships, Berkeley launched a series of counterattacks against the disorganized rebels eventually routing them altogether.

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