Berkeley's Tyranny
Bacon with an increased army now rode out once more against the
Indians. He made a rendezvous on the upper York -- the old Pamunkey
-- and to this center he gathered horsemen until there may have been
with him not far from a thousand mounted men. From here he sent
detachments against the Indian's villages in all the upper troubled
country, and afar into the sunset woods where the pioneer's cabin
had not yet been built. He acted with vigor. The Indians could not
stand against his horsemen and concerted measures, and back they
fell before the white men, westward again; or, if they stayed in the
ever dwindling villages, they gave hostages and oaths of peace.
Quiet seemed to descend once more upon the border.
But, if the frontier seemed peaceful, Virginia behind the border was
a bubbling cauldron. Bacon had now become a hero of the people, a
Siegfried capable of slaying the dragon. Nor were Lawrence and
Drummond idle, nor others of their way of thinking. The Indian
troubles might soon be settled, but why not go further, marching
against other troubles, more subtle and long-continuing, and
threatening all the future?
In the midst of this speculation and promise of change, the
Governor, feeling the storm, dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed
Bacon and his adherents rebels and traitors, and made a desperate
attempt to raise an army for use against the new-fangledness of the
time. This last he could not do. Private interest led many planters
to side with him, and there was a fair amount of passionate
conviction matching his own, that his Majesty the King and the
forces of law and order were being withstood, and without just
cause. But the mass of the people cried out to his speeches, "Bacon!
Bacon!" As the popular leader had been warned from Jamestown by news
of personal danger, so in his turn Berkeley seems to have believed
that his own liberty was threatened. With suddenness he departed the
place, boarded a sloop, and was "wafted over Chesapeake Bay thirty
miles to Accomac." The news of the Governor's flight, producing both
alarm in one party and enthusiasm in the other, tended to
precipitate the crisis. Though the Indian trouble might by now be
called adjusted, Bacon, far up the York, did not disband his men. He
turned and with them marched down country, not to Jamestown, but to
a hamlet called Middle Plantation, where later was to grow the town
of Williamsburg. Here he camped, and here took counsel with Lawrence
and Drummond and others, and here addressed, with a curious, lofty
eloquence, the throng that began to gather. Hence, too, he issued a
"Declaration," recounting the misdeeds of those lately in power,
protesting against the terms rebel and traitor as applied to himself
and his followers, who are only in arms to protect his Majesty's
demesne and subjects, and calling on those who are well disposed to
reform to join him at Middle Plantation, there to consider the state
of the country which had been brought into a bad way by "Sir
William's doting and irregular actings."
Upon his proclamation many did come to Middle Plantation, great
planters and small, men just freed from indentured service, holders
of no land and little land and much land, men of all grades of
weight and consideration and all degrees of revolutionary will, from
Drummond -- with a reported speech, "I am in overshoes; I will be in
overboots!" and a wife Sarah who snapped a stick in two with the
cry, "I care no more for the power of England than for this broken
straw!" -- to those who would be revolutionary as long as, and only
when, it seemed safe to be so.
How much of revolution, despite that speech about his Majesty's
demesne and subjects, was in Bacon's mind, or in Richard Lawrence's
mind and William Drummond's mind, or in the mind of their staunchest
supporters, may hardly now be resolved. Perhaps as much as was in
the mind of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason a
century later.
The Governor was in Accomac, breathing fire and slaughter, though as
yet without brand or sword with which to put his ardent desires into
execution. But he and the constituted order were not without friends
and supporters. He had, as his opponents saw, a number of "wicked
and pernicious counsellors, aides and assistants against the
commonalty in these our cruel commotions." Moreover -- and a great
moreover is that! -- it was everywhere bruited that he had sent to
England, to the King, "for two thousand Red Coates." Perhaps the
King -- perhaps England -- will take his view, and, not consulting
the good of Virginia, send the Red Coats! What then?
Bacon, as a measure of opposition, proposed "a test or recognition,"
to be signed by those here at Middle Plantation who earnestly do
wish the good of Virginia. It was a bold test! Not only should they
covenant to give no aid to the whilom?? Governor against this new
general and army, but if ships should bring the Red Coats they were
to withstand them. There is little wonder that "this bugbear did
marvellously startle" that body of Virginia horsemen, those
progressive gentlemen planters, and others. Yet in the end, after
violent contentions, the assembly at Middle Plantation drew up and
signed a remarkable paper, the "Oath at Middle Plantation."
Historically, it is linked on the one hand with that "thrusting out
of his government" of Sir John Harvey in Charles I's time, and on
the other with Virginian proceedings a hundred years later under the
third George. If his Majesty had been, as it was rumored, wrongly
informed that Virginia was in rebellion; if, acting upon that
misinformation, he sent troops against his loyal Virginians -- who
were armed only against an evil Governor and intolerable woes then
these same good loyalists would "oppose and suppress all forces
whatsoever of that nature, until such time as the King be fully
informed of the state of the case." What was to happen if the King,
being informed, still supported Berkeley and sent other Red Coats
was not taken into consideration.
This paper, being drawn, was the more quickly signed because there
arrived, in the midst of the debate, a fresh Indian alarm. Attack
threatened a fort upon the York -- whence the Governor had seen fit
to remove arms and ammunition! The news came most opportunely for
Bacon. "There were no more discourses." The major portion of the
large assemblage signed.
The old Government in Virginia was thus denied. But it was held that
government there must be, and that the people of Virginia through
representatives must arrange for it. Writs of election, made as
usual in the King's name, and signed by Bacon and by those members
of the Council who were of the revolt, went forth to all counties.
The Assembly thus provided was to meet at Jamestown in September.
So much business done, off rode Bacon and his men to put down this
latest rising of the Indians. Not only these but Native Americans in
a new quarter, tribes south of the James, kept them employed for
weeks to come. Nor were they unmindful of that proud old man, Sir
William Berkeley, over on the Eastern Shore, a well-peopled region
where traveling by boat and by sandy road was sufficiently easy.
Bacon, Lawrence, and Drummond finally decided to take Sir William
captive and to bring him back to Jamestown. For this purpose they
dispatched a ship across the Bay, with two hundred and fifty men,
under the command of Giles Bland, "a man of courage and haughty
bearing," and "no great admirer of Sir William's goodness." The ship
proceeded to the Accomac shore, anchored in some bight, and sent
ashore men to treat with the Governor. But the Governor turned the
tables on them. He made himself captor, instead of being made
captive. Bland and his lieutenants were taken, whereupon their
following surrendered into Berkeley's hands. Bland's second in
command was hanged; Bland himself was held in irons.
Now Berkeley's star was climbing. In Accomac he gathered so many
that, with those who had fled with him and later recruits who
crossed the Bay, he had perhaps a thousand men. He stowed these upon
the ship of the ill-fated Bland and upon a number of sloops. With
seventeen sail in all, the old Governor set his face west and south
towards the mouth of the James.
In that river, on the 7th of September, 1676, there appeared this
fleet of the King's Governor, set on retaking Virginia. Jamestown
had notice. The Bacon faction held the place with perhaps eight
hundred men, Colonel Hansford at their head. Summoned by Berkeley to
surrender, Hansford refused, but that same night, by advice of
Lawrence and Drummond, evacuated the place, drawing his force off
toward the York. The next day, emptied of all but a few citizens,
Jamestown received the old Governor and his army.
The tidings found Bacon on the upper York. Acting with his
accustomed energy, he sent out, far and wide, ringing appeals to the
country to rouse itself, for men to join him and march to the defeat
of the old tyrant. Numbers did come in. He moved with "marvelous
celerity." When he had, for the time and place, a large force of
rebels, he marched, by stream and plantation, tobacco field and
forest, forge and mill, through the early autumn country to
Jamestown. Civil war was on.
Across the narrow neck of the Jamestown peninsula had been thrown a
sort of fortification with ditch, earthwork, and palisade. Before
this Bacon now sounded trumpets. No answer coming, but the mouths of
cannon appearing at intervals above the breastwork, the "rebel"
general halted, encamped his men, and proceeded to construct siege
lines of his own. The work must be done exposed to Sir William's
iron shot.
Now comes a strange and discreditable incident. Patriots,
revolutionists, who on the whole would serve human progress, have
yet, as have we all, dark spots and seamy sides. Bacon's parties of
workmen were threatened, hindered, driven from their task by
Berkeley's guns. Bacon had a curious, unadmirable idea. He sent
horsemen to neighboring loyalist plantations to gather up and bring
to camp, not the planters -- for they are with Berkeley in Jamestown
-- but the planters' wives. Here are Mistress Bacon (wife of the
elder Nathaniel Bacon), Mistress Bray; Mistress Ballard, Mistress
Page, and others. Protesting, these ladies enter Bacon's camp, who
sends one as envoy into the town with the message that, if Berkeley
attacks, the whole number of women shall be placed as shield to
Bacon's men who build earthworks.
He was as good -- or as bad -- as his word. At the first show of
action against his workmen these royalist women were placed in the
front and were kept there until Bacon had made his counter-line of
defense. Sir William Berkeley had great faults, but at times -- not
always -- he displayed chivalry. For that day "the ladies' white
aprons" guarded General Bacon and all his works. The next day, the
defenses completed, this "white garde" was withdrawn.
Berkeley waited no longer but, though now at a disadvantage, opened
fire and charged with his men through gate and over earthworks. The
battle that followed was short and decisive. Berkeley's
chance-gathered army was no match for Bacon's seasoned Indian
fighters and for desperate men who knew that they must win or be
hanged for traitors. The Governor's force wavered and, unable to
stand its ground, turned and fled, leaving behind some dead and
wounded. Then Bacon, who also had cannon, opened upon the town and
the ships that rode before it. In the night the King's Governor
embarked for the second time and with him, in that armada from the
Eastern Shore, the greater part of the force he had gathered. When
dawn came, Bacon saw that the ships, large and small, were gone,
sailing back to Accomac. Bacon and his following thus came peaceably
into Jamestown, but with the somewhat fell determination to burn the
place. It should "harbor no more rogues." What Bacon, Lawrence,
Drummond, Hansford, and others really hoped -- whether they
forecasted a republican Virginia finally at peace and prosperous --
whether they saw in a vision a new capital, perhaps at Middle
Plantation, perhaps at the Falls of the Far West, a capital that
should be without old, tyrannical memories -- cannot now be said.
However it all may be, they put torch to the old capital town and
soon saw it consumed, for it was no great place, and not hard to
burn.
Jamestown had hardly ceased to smoke when news came that loyalists
under Colonel Brent were gathering in northern counties. Bacon, now
ill but energetic to the end, turned with promptness to meet this
new alarm. He crossed the York and marched northward through
Gloucester County. But the rival forces did not come to a fight.
Brent's men deserted by the double handful. They came into Bacon's
ranks "resolving with the Persians to go and worship the rising
sun." Or, hanging fire, reluctant to commit themselves either way,
they melted from Brent, running homeward by every road. Bacon, with
an enlarged, not lessened army, drew back into Gloucester.
Revolutionary fortunes shone fair in prospect. Yet it was but the
moment of brief, deceptive bloom before decay and fall.
At this critical moment Bacon fell sick and died. Some said that he
was poisoned, but that has never been proved. The illness that had
attacked him during his siege of Jamestown and that held on after
his victory seems to have sufficed for his taking off. In Gloucester
County he "surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep,
into the hands of that grim and all-conquering Captaine Death." His
body was buried, says the old account, "but where deposited till the
Generall day not knowne, only to those who are resolutely silent in
that particular."
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