Bacon's Rebellion

The decrease in tobacco price caused by the Navigation Acts had major influence on many of the people living in Virginia and its surrounding areas. It was one of the main causes of Bacon’s Rebellion, among others such as corruption of the government, “grievous taxations”, and trouble with the Indians of the frontier (p. 56).

The governor of Virginia, William Berkeley, was a very corrupt man who bestowed large land grants on members of his council and appointed legislators as sheriffs and tax collectors. He also took the vote away from landless free men, who made up half of the adult white men at the time. Although property -holding yeomen retained their voting rights, they were angered by the ruling of the wealthier people and their unfair taxations.

Another cause for the rebellion was Berkeley’s Indian policy, which whom Nathaniel Bacon – a young, well-connected English migrant and owner of a frontier estate, who also held a position on the governor’s council – did not agree with. By 1675, most Indians lived on treaty-guaranteed territory along the frontier, where poor freeholders and landless former servants wanted to settle. Opposition to expansion came from wealthy river-valley merchants, Governor Berkeley, and the planter merchants who traded with the Occaneechee Indians for beaver pelts and deerskins. Fighting broke out when a coalition of Virginia militiamen murdered 30 Indians and once again defied Berkeley’s orders by sending a larger force of 1,000 militiamen that surrounded a Susquehannock village, killing five chiefs who came out to negotiate. Later, the affliction continued as Bacon “mobilized his neighbors and attacked any Indians he could find” when Berkeley refused to grant him a military commission (p. 57). Due to this uprising, Bacon was arrested and expelled from the council. Bacon’s army, raged by this outcome, forced the governor to release their leader and to hold legislative elections. Although some reforms were made, Bacon remained...