"General Bacon is dead," they said.
"What! dead?" cried Robert.
"Yes, dead and buried. We thought it best to bury him in the forest where his enemies could not find him. Brent is crushed; his men have deserted him, and all are with us. The general died very suddenly in the arms of Major Pate."
It was the purpose of the friends of liberty to keep the death of Bacon a secret, and there is some dispute in history as to where and when he died. News of this character cannot be suppressed. It came out, and the republicans of Virginia began to lose heart from that hour, while the royalists' hopes increased.
Another general was elected to fill the place made vacant by Bacon. Drummond, Stevens, Cheeseman, or Lawrence might have organized the army and led them to victory; but the foolish frontiersmen chose, instead of either of these wise men, a grotesque personage named Ingram, who had been a rope dancer, and had no more qualifications for so important a position than an organ grinder, as the result soon proved. He was unable to hold them together. Colonel Hansford, the most daring young officer in Bacon's whole army, was captured at the home of his sweetheart, and Berkeley, to whom he was taken, decreed that he should be hung.
"Thomas Hansford," cried Berkeley, "I will quickly repay you for your part in this rebellion!"
Colonel Hansford answered, "I ask no favor but that I may be shot like a soldier and not hanged like a dog."
The governor replied, "You are to die, not as a soldier, but as a rebel."
Hansford was a native American and the first white native (say some historians) that perished on the gibbet. On coming to the gallows he said:
"Take notice, I die a loyal subject and a lover of my country."