Had Nathaniel Bacon's life been spared, who can say what its possibilities might or might not have been? His brief career was that of a meteor—springing in the twinkling of an eye into a dazzling being, dashing headlong upon its brilliant way, then going out in mystery, leaving only the memory of an existence that was all fire and motion. If he had lived a hundred years later the number of heroes of the American Revolution would doubtless have been increased by one—and his name would have been at the top of the list, or near it.
For about two hundred years after the episode of Bacon's Rebellion, in the history of Virginia, there was no light by which to view it other than such as was afforded by a few meagre accounts of persons opposed to it. It is only by the most painstaking and judicious sifting of these contemporary and sometimes vexingly conflicting statements,
diligent study of the period, and research into official colonial records, of late years unearthed, that the truth of the matter can be arrived at.
Unveiled by such investigation, the character of Bacon seems to have been (while of course he had his faults like other mortals) self-sacrificing to a heroic degree, sincere, unmercenary, and high-minded. If otherwise, it nowhere is revealed, even by the chronicles of his enemies, who while they frown upon his course cannot hide their admiration of the man. Such of his followers as lived to tell the story of the struggle from their own point of view doubtless dared not commit it to paper. If his intrepid and accomplished friends, Drummond and Lawrence, had lived, they might have left some testimony which would have prevented the world from misjudging him as it did through so many generations, though, after all, no musty document could speak so clearly in his behalf as does the fact that they like so many others, were ready to give their lives for him. A fire-brand! Perhaps so; for some
sores caustic is a necessary remedy. Profane? That he undoubtedly was, but plain speech was a part of the time he lived in, and a people settled in a wilderness and driven to desperation by hard times and the constant fear of violent death would hardly have chosen for their leader in a movement to redress their wrongs a man of mincing manners or methods. The only memorial of him left by a friendly hand, now remaining, is a bit of rhyme entitled, "Bacon's Epitaph made by his man," which truly prophesied,
"None shall dare his obsequies to sing
In deserv'd measures, until time shall bring
Truth crown'd with freedom, and from danger free
To sound his praise to all posterity."
