Bacon's Rebellion (R.D. 2)

Bacon’s Rebellion: Land or no Land?

----------Most people haven’t heard of the Hidden Rebellion. One usually just looks over it in history class, skipping straight to the American Revolution, because it’s the most famous. Most people don’t even think where a good portion of the ideas in those founding documents came from, what the first rebellion was that spawned such ideas as “class equality” and “government relationships with people”. Not many people have heard of Nathaniel Bacon, herald of new ideas, leader of uprisings, and defender of the poor man. This man was involved in a massive rebellion in one of the first and most prosperous colonies in the New World of America, Chesapeake Bay. The government was ruled by the iron fist of greed and money, funded by the sweat and blood of the working class. 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 class tension that led to Bacon’s Rebellion. 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 government, being mostly land owners, was not affected by the restricted land because they already had all of the land they needed. However, this was not true for the freed servants, who needed to buy more land to survive. 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 way the first sentence is put, displays the idea that the government, which was all grandees at the time, did not need the land because they were attempting to uphold that treaty for at least 30 years. The end of the quote states that the population kept growing due to the constant expansion of freed servants, who had come for land in the first place. Being unable to get the land, they began to breach the land that was assigned to the Indian by the grants, in order to fulfill their dreams of the New World. This began to direct some anger from the colonists at the source of the grants itself, the government.
----------Having to fight Indians every day in order to make a living, the poor farmers began to think that the government didn’t care about them. When the government attempted to appease the Indians, the poor farmers just got angrier at them. Not only the Indian relationship, but lowered prices, higher taxes, and restrictive Navigation Acts greatly damaged the relationship between the government and its people. “Berkeley had refused to react to the claims that the Indians were committing murders and thefts on the frontier. The colonial governor was making a good profit from trading with the Indians, and was not willing to disrupt that business by triggering open war. Nathanial Bacon triggered the civil war (one century before the American Revolution...) by demanding a military commission that would authorize him to attack the Susquehannock Indians. [...] Bacon quickly left Jamestown, rallied a mob, and attacked innocent Occaneechi, Tutelo, and Saponi Indians.” (http://www.virginiaplaces.org/military/bacon.html) Governor Berkley, head of the government, tried to keep good relationships with the Indians, where the poor farmers saw them as a major threat to their livelihood. The government also put on seemingly excessive taxes while the economic demands for tobacco were going down, while they themselves were benefiting from the trade with the Indians, which didn’t help to improve their image with the poor farmers. As a final annoyance to the farmers, England brought up the Navigation Acts, which took even more money from them. The farmers were losing a lot of money, and it seemed to them that it didn’t affect the grandees in the government as much, which was why they were attempting to appease the enemies of the poor farmer, while also putting more barriers up for them on an economic level. The next declaration of Governor Berkley, or any of that current government, would become the straw that broke the camel’s back.
----------After things began to look up for the poor farmers, Berkley attacked their icon, provoking the beast which was 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.
----------Land grants prevented the quick, mass expansions of farmers in the Chesapeake Bay area. As said in the first quote of this essay, the number of farmers who needed land multiplied after the treaty was made, which forced the farmers to push on the boundary lines. The lack of land for farmers to use caused a better market for the grandees due to lack of competition, which increased the profit being made by the rich plantation owners. The mass production of tobacco by the large plantations caused lowered prices for the farmers as well. These collective negatives from the restrictive land grants made it very hard for farmers to make a living in the Chesapeake Bay area. Not only were those two issues problems for the farmers, but the Indians who fiercely protected their lands were also a major problem.
----------The land grants added to the general hatred of the Indian people because they fought anyone who tried to take their land. Ever since their arrival, hostilities have been present with the colonists and the Indians, whether it was small tensions dampened by the prospects of a new world, or heightened malicious tensions created by the greed of the colonists. The constant battles 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 the poor farmers 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 reason was not the only one though; the other was the desires of the colonists, land. Colonists came to the New World for land, not Indians, and when the Indians fought them, they became even angrier that they couldn’t get what they wanted. This government decision created an economic class tension, racist battles that lined the borders, and eventually a whole rebellion. All of this happened because a large group of people couldn’t become successful doing what they wanted to do when they came to the New World.
----------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 class tensions that began Bacon’s Rebellion were caused by the Virginian land grants. Poor farmers began to appear in mass quantities due to the amount of freed servants. These people needed more land to grow crops, but began to push more towards the Indians in an attempt to satisfy themselves. The Indians attacked the farmers who intruded, which caused the government to pass land grants to prevent these conflicts, but with a boundary on the land, and an ever-growing supply of farmers, this boundary was constantly pushed, causing the Indians to fight even more fiercely than before. With the government one of the groups involved in the land grants that provided these hardships for the farmers, there originated some tension between the poor and the government. Indians had also fought colonists in other places and had gone on massive attacks before, lowering the colonists liking for them. When a man began to lead these people to a better way, the government interfered once again, increasing the tensions to such levels that it broke and began a rebellion. The hatred of Indians and a constant vigilance towards the relationship with government and people remained a constant in the Chesapeake Bay area before and after the rebellion. Such problems are still around today, though in different forms. The most obvious problem is the immigration problem. The government has passed laws towards the prevention of illegal immigrants, and so the large masses of illegal people are being affected to the point that they almost can’t work. This creates mixed feeling towards all sides involved, hatred of the laws by the immigrants, hatred of the immigrants by people, and hatred of the situation by all three. The hidden rebellion that is Bacon’s Rebellion brought up the issue of the relationship between government and people, that laws should be investigated thoroughly before being passed, and that the people should always have a say in the government, or else you’re going to have a rebellion on your hands.