Nathaniel Bacon (c. 1647–1676) was a farmer and rebel leader in colonial Virginia. In 1676, he waged a brief but widespread revolt against the colony’s government—one of the largest uprisings in North America before the American Revolution a century later.
Known as Bacon’s Rebellion, the revolt stemmed from dissatisfaction with William Berkeley (1605–1677), the governor of Virginia. Bacon and his supporters, mostly small tobacco farmers and frontiersmen, were upset over taxes and what they felt was Berkeley’s unwillingness to protect them from attacks by Native Americans.
At its peak, the rebellion had thousands of supporters and controlled large swaths of the colony. But the movement collapsed in late 1676 after Bacon died of dysentery; after the leader’s death, Berkeley swiftly quashed the rebellion and hanged dozens of Bacon’s officers.
A member of a prestigious English family, Bacon was born in Suffolk, England, and graduated from Cambridge. He moved to London and then immigrated to Virginia in 1674. The family established a farm near what is now the city of Richmond.
Initially, Bacon was a supporter of Berkeley and a member of the governor’s council. But Bacon came to sympathize with Berkeley’s critics. Many settlers felt vulnerable to attack, and they wanted the Indians killed or removed from the colony. But Berkeley was hesitant, fearing that he would disrupt trade as well as provoke a wider war if he pursued the Indians aggressively.
Bacon, seizing upon the anxiety of the settlers, asked the governor for permission to lead an attack on the Indians. When Berkeley refused, Bacon went to war anyway, massacring several groups of Native Americans. Berkeley, enraged, declared Bacon a traitor in early 1676. Bacon was unrepentant: “If to plead the cause of the oppressed … be treason,” he said, “Lord Almighty judge and let the guilty die.”
Bacon’s death a few months later quickly ended the conflict. But the impact of his revolt reverberated for decades in British North America and served as a model of disobedience to the Crown. A century later, a patriot leader from Virginia, Patrick Henry (1736–1799), echoed his fellow Virginian in one of his famous calls for revolution: “If this be treason, make the most of it!”
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- One of the houses seized by the rebels in Westmoreland, Virginia, belonged to Colonel John Washington (c. 1631–1677)—the great-grandfather of George Washington (1732–1799).
- The king, Charles II (1630–1685), was so annoyed by Berkeley’s mismanagement of the Virginia colony that he recalled him to London, where Berkeley died the next year.
- Bacon’s cousin—also named Nathaniel Bacon—remained loyal to the Virginia government during the rebellion. He was rumored, at the time, to have offered to bribe Bacon to stay loyal to protect the family’s reputation.
