Bacon’s Rebellion
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Why did Nathaniel Bacon and his followers burn Jamestown in 1676?
September 19th, 2026. On September 19th, 1676, 350 years ago today, Nathaniel Bacon and his followers burned Jamestown, the capital of the Virginia colony. The destruction of the seat of government was the culmination of a year of conflict between Governor Sir William Berkeley and poor settlers in the colony. Fears of another such uprising in the future led Virginia lawmakers to make sure poor men would not make common cause, passing laws to divide them along racial lines. The crisis had begun a year before, in the fall of 1675, when Thomas Matthew refused to pay members of the Doeg tribe what they believed they were owed for goods they had sold him. They raided his farm on the northern neck of Virginia, taking some of his pigs.
A number of Doegs were killed in the skirmish. The Virginia militia retaliated for the raid, but mistakenly fell on a village of Susquehannocks, who were actually allied with the Virginia government. Blindsided and furious, the Susquehannocks began to raid local farms. The raids set a smoldering power struggle within the colony ablaze. Since the colony's beginning in 1607, both English custom and the drive to produce cash crops had created a clear line between men who had land and power and those who worked for them.
How did the 1675 raid on Thomas Matthew’s farm spark the power struggle in Virginia?
Horrific death rates made those men who had paid for the passage of workers from England to North America drive them hard to get as much labor out of them as possible before they died. After the arrival of Africans to the colony in 1619, those enslaved people joined indentured white workers to make common cause against their masters. They worked and socialized together, and according to advertisements in court cases, ran away, committed crimes, and had children together. They also suffered similar punishments when they ran afoul of the law. And those few who lived past the deadly early years of their servitude shared similar access to the benefits of freedom, although slaves could not simply outlive their contracts, but had to buy their way out of bondage with money they had earned in their spare time.
At first, so many poor Virginians died in the colony that the few who survived posed little threat to their former masters. But by the 1660s, the survivors had grown into a large population of poor men, white and black both, who were free but could not afford prime land in the eastern part of the colony. So they migrated to the western frontier, hoping to become farmers. There, these settlers thoroughly resented the Eastern government that seemed to ignore their interests. In 1675, they saw the increased fighting with the local tribes as an opportunity to weaken those tribes and take their lands. But Governor Berkeley disagreed.
In what ways did indentured white workers and African slaves form a united front before the rebellion?
He wanted to avoid an expensive war, and he wanted to honor a 1646 treaty under which allied tribes paid an annual tribute to the colonial government and fought alongside the English against tribes that didn't have such an agreement. Nathaniel Bacon had arrived in the colony in 1674. He was well-connected and wealthy. He was actually related to Berkeley by marriage, but was frustrated that Berkeley wasn't following his advice. Bacon began to speak for the angry Westerners, and by spring 1676, had welded them into a powerful coalition that was attacking local indigenous tribes without the government's blessing. Finally, Berkeley declared Bacon a rebel. Under Bacon, vagrants and poor farmers, including former slaves and servants, went to war against the Pamunkey tribe and the indigenous tribes who lived around them.
and then they marched on Jamestown. On July 30th, 1676, Bacon issued the Declaration of the People of Virginia, complaining that the governor had raised taxes too high, was corrupt, had put his own ignorant judges in place, and had failed to protect settlers against indigenous Americans. He included a list of Berkeley supporters he called Confederates, Aiders, and Assisters of Berkeley's Perfidy. Bacon ordered them all to surrender to him within four days and declared that he and his men intended to confiscate their estates.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why did Nathaniel Bacon and his followers burn Jamestown in 1676?
0:07–1:39
2
How did the 1675 raid on Thomas Matthew’s farm spark the power struggle in Virginia?
1:39–3:18
3
In what ways did indentured white workers and African slaves form a united front before the rebellion?
3:18–4:57
4
What was the Declaration of the People of Virginia and how did it mobilize Bacon’s coalition?
4:57–6:26
5
Why did Bacon’s forces decide to burn Jamestown on September 19, 1676?
6:26–7:47
6
How did Virginia’s post‑rebellion laws create a racial divide between Black slaves and white servants?
7:47–9:21