Bacon and Drummond did not die in vain. Though they and thousands of others were stigmatized as rebels and traitors, though the cause they contended for ended in disastrous failure, Bacon's Rebellion had a lasting influence on American history. It served as a warning that Americans would not submit to misgovernment and despotism under whatever form. Had not the British Government under George III forgotten that warning there might have been no American Revolution.
To contend, as some have done, that Bacon's Rebellion was no more than a quarrel between a rash young man and an old fool, is to make the most shallow interpretation. Men do not rush to arms, and risk their lives and property in a wild uprising because of a dispute between individuals. As Professor Charles M. Andrews has pointed out, revolutions "are the detonations of explosive materials, long accumulating and often dormant. They are the resultant of a vast complex of economic, political, social, and legal forces, which taken collectively are the masters, not the servants, of statesmen and political agitators. They are never sudden in their origin, but look back to influences long in the making."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] William Edmundson, Journal, 71, 72.
[2] Virginia Magazine 3: 134.
[3] Ibid., 135.
[4] Virginia Magazine 3: 141, 142.
[5] CO5-1371, p. 241.
[6] Bath papers, "Virginia's Deplored Condition."
[7] Ibid. 1: 173.