BACON'S Rebellion: A Summary
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Bacon's Rebellion all began with a concept called indentured servitude. Right after the discovery and colonization of the New World, the settlers, who had come vying after gold and riches, soon discovered that despite the very obvious lack of gold in this new land, it was rich in something else. The soil here was extremely fertile and helped them to grow all kinds of crops, which quickly became the livelihood of these southern colonies. However, these labor intensive cash crops required lots of manpower to grow and maintain and the wealthy land owners didn't have the time or the means, so in step the ideals of indentured servitude.
Basically, any lower class Englishman or woman without the money to travel to the New World would sign an indenture that would grant them land, clothes, and food in the New World in exchange for them working a wealthy landowners fields for a period of 5 to 7 years that after which they were free to do what they wanted. Problems arose though when the newly freed indentured servants, who had been granted land further into the frontier than the Tidewater aristocrats by the river, encountered and engaged in conflicts with the Native Americans who believed that they were infringing on their property. The poor, recently-freed, indentured servants, knew that they couldn't conquer the locals so they appealed to the Governor William Berkley for help. The governor was secretly trading furs with the Native Americans though and refused their appeal. This angered the poor farmers and caused a feeling of resentment and generally gave off the vibe that the Aristocrats didn't care about them. Among them, an aristocrat by the name of Nathaniel Bacon, who resented William Berkley for not granting him political power, rallied the forces of the poor farmers and led them to The House of Burgess where they demanded the Aristocrats help them. Still, the wealthy landowners refused and Bacon stormed into Jamestown with all his followers and burned it to the ground, threatening that The House of Burgess was next. The uprising ended shortly thereafter when Bacon contracted dysentery and died, allowing Governor Berkley to quickly extinguish the remaining rebels. Despite the entire ordeal being, for the most part, a gigantic failure, Bacon's rebellion is still important today for what happened afterwards. The rich landowners had now seen the full extent of the resentment that the free indentured servants had for them and they realized that if they continued to free indentured servants that more rebellions were possible and very likely. Therefore they began looking for a solution so that they could keep their workforce, but stop them from being freed, which led to them buying Africans to work the fields in the place of servants. So, in an indirect, roundabout sort of way, Bacon's Rebellion helped to promote African Slavery in the U.S. |
Sources:
- Written by Danielle N. Andrews
- http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/bacons-rebellion.htm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon's_Rebellion
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p274.html