Revised Essay 1, Bacon's Rebellion: Land or No Land? (R.D. for Portfolio)

(Note this is a Rough Draft, The Final Draft will be posted on Wednesday.)
Bacon’s Rebellion: Land or no Land?

-----There is a time in history when a revolutionary led many into battle against greed and injustice. Savages fought the ideals and actions of prosperity for the lower class, and the rich government ignored the pleas for help. The poor were then forced to fight for a the chance at making a living, while under a ignorant and greedy government. These poor people were forced to a rebellion. You may have heard of it, or you may have not. This rebellion is where a many of the ideas in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence came from, such ideas as “class equality” and “government relationships with people”. Some people haven’t heard of Nathaniel Bacon, fearless herald of new ideas, leader of uprisings, and defender of the poor man. This visionary was involved in a massive class rebellion during the beginning of one of the first and most prosperous colonies in the New World of America, Chesapeake Bay. The government was ruled by the iron fists of greed, funded by the sweat and blood of the working class, and maintained by ignorance and social hierarchy. When the government made a deal with the savages of the new land, they cut off the only way the poor farmer of yesterday survived, land. The Virginian land grants that were given out to the Indians caused the class tension that led to Bacon’s Rebellion, and eventually the solutions to those very problems. If you read this paper about the massacre that has not been heard, you will find that the restrictive orders that came from the Virginian elite prevented the success of the little guy. With such restrictions, hatred and pain seeped from the cracks in society, aimed towards the Indians and those who worked with them, the grandees of tobacco.
-----Land grants caused less land to be available to the freed servants, which started a growing dislike for the grandees. The recently freed indentured servants needed land to make a living, but with the increasing number, land started to become scarce. This forced them to push against the Indians for more land, causing conflicts between the poor farmers and the Indians. This caused the government to solve the problem by giving the Indians land grants, which stopped the conflicts. The text book discusses this situation that created tension between the two economic classes, “The treaty that concluded the war established policies toward the Indians that the government tried to maintain over the next 30 years […]. Had the Chesapeake population remained constant, the policy might have worked. But the number of land-hungry colonists, especially poor, recently freed servants, continued to multiply. In their quest for land, they pushed beyond the treaty limits of English settlement and encroached steadily on Indian land.” (The American Promise, pg. 92). The fact that the grandees were expecting the treaties to hold for at least 30 years shows they expected they would not need the land, since they already had more than what they needed at the time. The population kept growing due to the constant expansion of freed servants, who had come for land in the first place, and being unable to get the land, they began to breach the treaties. This governmental restriction and the constant battles with Indians due to the restrictions began to direct anger from the colonists at the source of the grants, the government.
-----After things began to look up for the poor farmers, Berkley attacked their icon, Nathaniel Bacon, which provoked Bacon’s Rebellion. Berkley had once before labeled Bacon as a traitor, but quickly took it back when he was voted into the House of Burgesses. This was the attempts at a “tactic” to appease the majority of the public, “Hoping to maintain the fragile peace on the frontier in 1676, Governor Berkley declared Bacon a rebel, threatened to punish him for treason, and called for new elections of burgesses who, Berkley believed, would endorse his get-tough policy. To Berkley’s surprise, the election backfired. Almost all the old burgesses were voted out of office, their places taken by local leaders, including Bacon…..When Bacon learned that Berkley had once again branded him a traitor, he declared war against Berkley and the other grandees.” (The American Promise, Pg. 93). Bacon, the leader of the poor farmers, had finally gotten in to the government and began to pass Bacon’s Laws that benefitted the farmers by pushing back Indians and cutting away taxes. Berkley, being pressured by the grandees, once again declared Bacon as a traitor, which finally pushed the poor farmers to war against the unfair higher class. The rest of the story is pretty much just fighting for a while until Bacon’s side is defeated by a very unfortunate chain of events. This rebellion might not have pushed out the grandees, but it did affect the society in many other ways.
-----The land grants added to the general hatred of the Indian people, which increased the relationships between the rich and the poor. Ever since the colonist’s arrival, hostilities have been present between the colonists and the Indians. The constant battles for land between both sides only increased these tensions, "[We must defend ourselves] against all Indians in general, for that they were all Enemies." This was the unequivocal view of Nathaniel Bacon, a young, wealthy Englishman who had recently settled in the backcountry of Virginia. The opinion that all Indians were enemies was also shared by a many other Virginians, especially those who lived in the interior." (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p274.html). People in the Virginia area already hated the Indians due to their actions against the growth of poor farms. The mindset of these people was that Indians would rather die than civilize, which caused most farmers to treat the Indians as an incurable pestilence that could only be held back by violence and discrimination. This mindset only increased as the farmers began to spread out for land, as the colonists met opposition to their livelihood. Colonists came to the New World for land, not Indians, and when the Indians fought them, they became even angrier at them, since they couldn’t get what they wanted. As the government attempted to fix these problems by pacifying the Indian side, they unknowingly created an economic class tension and racist battles that lined the borders, and eventually a whole rebellion. As the rebellion ended, everyone agreed that the main enemy was not class, but the Indians. It was the Indians who wouldn’t civilize, it was the Indians who wouldn’t give up their lands, and it was the Indians that forced the government to put such land grants in place in the beginning of the conflicts. These poor farmers were unable to fulfill their dreams of success, which caused uprisings in the colony to the point of changing the government policies.
-----A current example of government laws preventing the prosperity of a certain group of people is the illegal alien issue. Currently, many illegal immigrants come into our country, which has caused a problem with people in the lower states. One of the reasons it’s a problem is because it’s against the law for these people to come across in such ways. Laws have been created that say this is illegal, “Aliens found to be in violation of U.S. immigration laws may be removed from the country through a formal process (which can include penalties such as fines, imprisonment, or prohibition against future entry) or may be offered the chance to depart voluntarily (which does not preclude future entry).” (http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/70xx/doc7051/02-28-Immigration.pdf). This summarizes a legal document that prevents the illegal entry in the U.S.A., therefore preventing a whole group of people from doing work. Like in Bacon’s times, the government has passed laws that have had a greatly negative effect on a group of people, almost to the extent of stopping them from making a livelihood.
-----The unfeeling greed of the colonial government in Chesapeake Bay would be soon confronted with the fury of almost all of the population up in arms against them, leading to a change in government direction. The poor farmers rose up against the ignorance of the higher social class, creating bonds between people and government that never existed there before. The government learned that it needed to respect and listen to it’s citizens, and the people realized the benefits of having a say in government. Unfortunately, these realizations were held together near their creation by the common hatred for Indians, and their obstruction in the process of growth. People and their government need to have healthy relationships, or else anarchy and death ensues. Constant maintenance is required, and sometimes that maintenance can be somewhat unethical, but is necessary to prevent national collapse.