(Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a new monthly column. In the current political climate, Black history is contested terrain.)
When one reflects upon American colonial history, one might think of the legal idea that “a slave cannot be a white man, and every man of color was a descendant of a slave.” However, this assertion is true only at a point in time in the development of race relations in America.
Before this assertion was solidified, the class question was primary and the race question was secondary. An example was Bacon’s Rebellion in the colony of Virginia during the summer of 1676.
The origins of Bacon’s Rebellion were in the conquest and dissolution of the Powhatan Confederation (1644–1646) and its lands being distributed to the English aristocratic planter class.
Indians, formally associated with the Confederation, encroached on the plantation lands, causing a military response from the Virginian colonists.
The importation of African slaves entered into this binary of White versus Red beginning in 1619. This adversarial tri-racial community managed to produce tobacco for internal trade.
Race, caste and class were the motivating factors of the social relations in the colony. The planters looked down upon what they called the “giddy multitude,” which was the socialized grouping of slaves, indentured servants, debtors, landless freemen and beggars, both white and Black.
Arriving in about 1641 was William Berkeley, who was soon to be appointed governor of the colony. Shortly after, Nathaniel Bacon immigrated to the colony. Bacon was related to Berkeley via marriage. Both men, wealthier than most, purchased huge tracts of Powhatan land near Jamestown.
During the decades of the 1650s and 1660s, a sizable number of indentured servants, Black and white, had completed their required indentured labor service and clamored for land that was under the control of Berkeley and his associates within the planter class.
Eager to expand his own landholdings, Bacon and followers from the giddy multitudes attacked the nearby peaceful Doeg Indians and acquired their lands. They avoided attacking the more militant and elusive Susquehannocks.
Bacon became the voice of giddy multitudes and advocated for the genocide of the Doeg or Algonquin Indians or any other remaining human remnants of the Powhatan Confederation. However, Berkeley, fearing an outbreak of frontier Indian warfare and therefore the disruption of lucrative trade, sought to placate a more aggressive Indian response by jailing Bacon for a few months.
Once released. Bacon, as a land speculator, saw an opportunity to rise further up into the ranks of the colony’s planter class. Whereas Berkeley, making a profitable income trading with the Indians, developed a policy of peaceful coexistence and containment.
But Bacon wanted more land and so did the “newgatters and jaylebirds.” These terms applied to the segments of the giddy multitudes who were criminals who came from being incarcerated in England, Scotland or Ireland.
Poor white and Black freemen worked the tobacco plantations for “starvation wages.” Black slaves, Scots-Irish servants and a smattering of Dutch servants bonded with Black slaves and ran away from their conditions of exploitation. Colonial court records are replete with the capture of these resisters and their punishments.
By the 1670s, there were 2,000–4,000 African slaves laboring on the large tobacco estates. Indentured servants, freemen and slaves became kindred spirits in understanding their common plight. The desperate plight of Blacks became even more problematic when the planter class began to legalize by statute Black slavery in the 1660s.
Bacon, understanding the grievances and discontent of the giddy multitudes and to serve his own interests for power and additional land, issued on July 30, 1676, his “Declaration of the People.” In this document, he accused Governor Berkeley of corruption on eight different counts.
Several hundreds of the giddy multitudes were seduced by Bacon’s promises of land and opportunities and freedom for indentured servants, and lower taxes for freemen and took up arms.
As the rebellion meandered through the summer months, fortunate for Berkeley was the arrival of sea-captain Thomas Grantham and his 33-gun warship, the Concord. Grantham’s account describes confronting, at a fortification called West Point, a group of armed English servants, freemen and slaves numbering around 400 souls.
Grantham was able to persuade most to disarm and surrender except for about 80 slaves and 20 Englishmen. Grantham, through a slate of trickery, cornered the entire lot and forced their capitulation.
This achievement by Grantham essentially ended the rebellion and Bacon’s only victory came when he, attempting to locate Berkeley, attacked Jamestown, and burned it to the ground when the governor was not found there.
In an anti-climax, Bacon died of dysentery in the Virginia bush in October 1676, ending the rebellion.
Really informative essay. Well written.