Bacon's Rebellion, 1676

by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

At this juncture Berkeley rushed out, gesticulating wildly and denouncing Bacon to his face as a traitor.

Then he threw back his coat and shouted: "Here, shoot me, 'fore God, fair mark, shoot."

Bacon replied that he would not hurt a hair of his head. They had come for a commission to save their lives from the Indians, which had so often been promised.

The Burgesses hearing the noise below, crowded to the windows. But they drew back when the soldiers pointed their fusils at them, calling out: "We will have it. We will have it." One of the Burgesses called back: "For God's sake hold your hands; forbear a little and you shall have what you please."

After walking up and down before the State House for some time, muttering threats and "new coined oaths," Bacon mounted the steps to the Long Room, where the Burgesses sat, and demanded a commission to lead a force out against the Indians. One of them told him that governor alone had the right to grant a commission. But when he left they sent a message to Sir William advising him to issue the commission. The Council, too, pointing out that he and they were in Bacon's power, added their voices. At last, though with intense bitterness, he yielded.

But new humiliations awaited him. He was forced to write the King justifying Bacon's conduct, sign blank commissions for Bacon's officers, and imprison some of his most loyal friends. So long as it did not concern "life and limb" he was willing to do anything to be rid of him.

In his determination to secure a commission Bacon did not neglect the matter of reform. When Berkeley suggested that they decide their controversy by a duel with swords, he replied that "he came for redress of the people's grievances." In the Assembly he "pressed hard, nigh an hour's harangue on preserving our lives from the Indians, inspecting the revenues, the exorbitant taxes, and redressing the grievances and calamities of that deplorable country." After this impassioned plea he must have been greatly surprised when the Assembly told him "that they had already redressed their grievances." Since, had the so-called Bacon's Laws been passed while he was sitting in the Council he would have known it, they must have been rushed through during the brief period between his flight from Jamestown and his return.

It will be helpful to recall the situation in the little capital at the time. With hundreds of enraged frontiersmen "within a day's journey", with no force which could be trusted to oppose them, the governor and his friends were in a state of panic. Even before Bacon's escape Ludwell wrote: "We have all the reason in the world to suspect their designs are ruinous." And now, with Bacon back at their head to tell them of his humiliation and report that he still had no commission, Berkeley feared the worst. Then came the certain information that Bacon was marching on the town.

Obviously the Assembly and the governor rushed Bacon's Laws through in a desperate, last minute attempt to appease Bacon and his men. When the governor affixed his signature he must have been almost within hearing distance of the tramp of armed men. And it is significant that both the governor and the Assembly wished to have the laws read before Bacon's men "for their satisfaction." That Bacon, who was in no humor to be appeased, refused to permit this, is no indication that he did not heartily approve of the laws.

We do not know who drew up Bacon's Laws. It may have been Lawrence and Drummond, who introduced them through some ally in the House. It may have been Bacon's neighbor, Thomas Blayton, whom Colonel Edward Hill afterwards called "Bacon's great engine" in the Assembly. It may have been James Minge, clerk of the Assembly, "another [of] Bacon's great friends in forming the laws." More probably it was the committee on grievances. But whoever drew them up, whoever introduced them, most of the credit goes to Bacon. They were aimed at the abuses he repeatedly denounced, they were passed in an Assembly which Bacon had incited the people to demand and which Berkeley declared overwhelmingly pro-Bacon, and signed under the threat of Bacon's armed forces.