 In the early 1660s, England's restored King Charles II harbored a bit of a grudge. Parliament showed the world that kings too could die if and when the people demanded it, and that was a scary precedent if ever there was one. Charles rounded up the most dangerous regicides and dissenters, executed the worst offenders against royalty, and banished many more to servitude in the new world. Once in Virginia, though, they almost immediately began conspiring amongst themselves to revive the old battles between slavery and freedom. This is Liberty Chronicles, a project of Libertarianism.org. I'm Anthony Comegna. Virginia's Burgesses and Cavalier Governor William Barkley used the restoration period to double down on long-standing policies of persecution. Charles I had appointed Barkley in 1641, shortly before the heavy fighting started at home, but the Commonwealth's forces compelled Virginia's submission by 1652 and Barkley temporarily retired. Reappointed by Charles in 1660, the governor and the House of Burgesses determined to consolidate control over the colony and reassert Cavalier power in Virginia. The Chesapeake Lordlings feared, above all else, combinations of black and white laborers inspired by Antonomian ideas. In 1662, a new model army vet named George Wilson shared chains and a post with an American Indian. Wilson was guilty of organizing mixed-sex religious meetings, but his makeshift congregations included black and white skins. The next year, at Poplar Spring, Virginia, white indentured servants and African slaves combined forces into what's called the Servants Plot, or the Gloucester County Conspiracy. Sources on the proposed rebellion are scarce, and almost nothing survives from the conspirators themselves. It appears their numbers included Muggletonians and Fifth Monarchists, veterans from the new model army, men and women, white and black. The Poplar Spring conspirators planned to revolutionize the colony, revitalizing the Commonwealth spirit in the new world. Their first stop would be Lieutenant Colonel Francis Willis' plantation to steal arms and drums, essential tools when raising spontaneous armies from the countryside. Whatever language you spoke, whichever continent you or your ancestors were ripped from, everyone in Virginia knew the sound of war drums. Most of them also knew the sting of betrayal. When a servant named Birkenhead revealed the plot to the House of Burgesses, they awarded him 5,000 pounds of tobacco and declared a colonial holy day. Between the Restoration in 1675, Berkeley's generation of cavalier aristocratic gentlemen adventurers in Virginia was gradually replaced by new waves of eager upstart landholders. The most important of these was Nathaniel Bacon. Whereas Berkeley was a long-established Virginian, Bacon only arrived in the colony in 1674. Within a year, Berkeley appointed him to the Council of State, and by 1676 Bacon was leading campaigns against Okaniches, Pamunkis and other neighboring Indians. Bacon, like Berkeley, was a sophisticated Englishman. He graduated from Cambridge and traveled widely in Europe, but after allegedly trying to cheat another young man out of his inheritance, Bacon's father purchased him a new life in Virginia. In his Reflections on the Rebellion, a year later, Berkeley argued that Bacon's followers encompassed Virginia with rebellion-like waters in every respect, like that of Masienelo, except their leader. Masienelo led a short-lived, proletarian-leveling revolution in Naples in 1647, just a few months before the Putney debates in England. Throughout the English world, Masienelo became a symbol of the threats posed to property interests when common people developed a sense of class consciousness. Berkeley saw Masienelo's everywhere in Bacon's ranks, but Bacon himself was undeniably a fellow aristocrat and all the more fearsome because he was willing to reach across class boundaries to enlist the poor, the dissenter, and the slave in his cause. Few contemporary or historical accounts of Bacon's rebellion agree in every particular about the movement's motivations and outcomes. For the Jacksonian Democrat and America's first real professional historian, George Bancroft, Virginians had enjoyed free government for three generations on the edge of the wilderness. For Bancroft and nationalist historians, this was the prelude to the American Revolution. It was the people seizing their government, its policy-making apparatus, and its legitimacy so that the popular interest might once again govern Virginia. For more disinterested observers, including planter and merchant Thomas Matthew of Cherry Point, Northumberland County, Bacon's rebellion was a bizarre and violent event with few truly heroic figures on either side. Matthew recalls a mysterious scene in which one Robert Hinn was discovered in his doorway with a dead Indian lying beside him. Hinn implicated do-ag Indians and immediately died. The English treated this murder mystery as a mandate to unleash war on the entire frontier zone. Bacon's rebellion had officially begun. The beginning progress in conclusion of Bacon's rebellion 1675 to 1676 by Thomas Matthew 1705. About the year 1675 appeared three prodigies in that country, which, from the attending disasters, were looked upon as ominous presages. The one was a large comet every evening for a week, and more at southwest, 35 degrees high, streaming like a horse tail westwards until it reached almost the horizon and setting towards the northwest. Another was flights of pigeons in breath nigh a quarter of the mid hemisphere, and of their length was no visible end whose weights break down the limbs of large trees whereon these rested at nights, of which the fowler shot abundance and eat them. This sight put the old planters under the more portentous apprehensions because the like was seen, as they said, in the year 1640 when the Indians committed the last massacre, but not after, until that present year 1675. The third strange appearance was swarms of flies about an inch long and big as the top of a man's little finger, rising out of spigot holes in the earth which eat the new sprouted leaves from the tops of the trees without other harm and in a month left us. My dwelling was in Northumberland, the lowest county on Potamac River, Stafford being the upmost. We're having also a plantation, servants cattle, etc. My overseer there had agreed with one Robert Hen to come thither and be my herdsman who then lived 10 miles above it. But on a Sabbath day morning in the summer Anno 1675, people their way to church saw this Hen lying thwart his threshold and an Indian without the door both chopped on their heads, arms and other parts as if done with Indian hatchets. The Indian was dead, but Hen went ask who did that, answered, Doe eggs, Doe eggs, and soon died. Then a boy came out from under a bed where he had hid himself and told them Indians had come at break of day and done those murders. From this Englishman's blood did by degrees arise Bacon's Rebellion with a following mischiefs which overspread all Virginia and twice endangered Maryland as by the ensuing account is evident. Of this horrid action, Colonel Mason who commanded the militia regiment of foot and Captain Brent the troop of horse and that county both dwelling six or eight miles downwards having speedy notice raised 30 or more men and pursued those Indians 20 miles up and four miles over that river into Maryland where landing at dawn of day they found two small paths. Each leader with his party took a separate path and in less than a furlong path either found a cabin which they silently surrounded. Captain Brent went to the Doe eggs cabin as it proved to be who speaking the Indian tongue called to have a macho comiche we whip IE a council called presently such being the usual manner with Indians. The king came trembling forth and would have fled when Captain Brent catching hold of his twisted lock which was all the hair he wore and with him he was come for the murder of Robert Hen. The king pleaded ignorance and slip loose whom Brent shot dead with his pistol. The Indians shot two or three guns out of the cabin the English shot into it the Indians thronged out at the door and fled. The English shot as many as they could so that they killed ten as Captain Brent told me and brought away the king's son of about eight years old concerning whom is an observable passage at the end of this expedition. The noise of this shooting awakened the Indians in the cabin which Colonel Mason had encompassed who likewise rushed out and fled of whom his company supposing from that noise of shooting Brent's party to be engaged shot as a Colonel informed me. Fourteen before an Indian came who with both hands shook him friendly by one arm saying Sasquay Hanu's netus ie Sasquano Sasquay Hanu friends and fled where upon he ran amongst his men crying out for the Lord's sake shoot no more these are our friends the Sasquay Hanu's. The Sasquay Hanu's were newly driven from their habitations at the head of Chesapeake Bay by the Sinaka Indians down the head of the Potomac where they sought protection under the Pascataway Indians who had a fort near the head of that river and also were our friends. These escaped Indians forsaking Maryland took their route over the head of that river and thence over the heads of Rapahonic and York Rivers killing whom they found of the utmost plantations until they came to the head of James River where with Bacon and others they slew Mr. Bacon's overseer whom he much loved and one of his servants whose blood he vowed to revenge if possible. In these frightful times the most exposed small families withdrew into our houses of better numbers which we fortified with palisades and redoubts. Neighbors and bodies joined their labors from each plantation to others alternately taking their arms into the fields and setting sentinels. No man stirred out of door unarmed Indians were ever and and on a spide. Three, four, five or six in a party lurking throughout the whole land yet what was remarkable I rarely heard of any houses burnt though abundance was forsaken nor ever of any corn or tobacco cut up or other injury done besides murders except the killing of very few cattle and swine. Frequent complaints of bloodsheds were sent to senior William Berkeley then governor from the heads of the rivers which were as often answered with promises of assistance. These at the heads of James and York Rivers having now most people destroyed by the Indians flight thither from Potamac grew impatient at the many slaughters of their neighbors and rose for their own defense who choosing Mr. Bacon for their leader sent often times to the governor simply beseeching a commission to go against those Indians at their own charge which is honor as they promised but did not send. The mysteries of these delays were wondered at in which I never heard any could penetrate into other than the effects of his passion and a new not to be mentioned occasion of avarice to both which he was by the common vogue more than a little addicted whatever were the popular surmises and murmurings viste that no bullets would pierce beaver skins rebels forfeitures would be loyal inheritances etc during these protractions and people often slain most are all of the officers civil and military with as many dwellers next the heads of rivers has made up 300 men taking Mr. Bacon for their commander met and concerted together the danger of going without a commission on the one part and the continual murders of their neighbors on the other part not knowing who's or how many of their own turns might be next and came to the resolution viste to prepare themselves with necessaries for a march but interim to send again for a commission which if could or could not be obtained by a certain day they would proceed commission or no commission 20th century historians with a more global perspective on British imperial activity recognized Bacon's rebellion as a racialized conflict against the Indians which transformed into a vehicle for the expression of popular discontent two months into his leadership over the Indian campaigns a newly elected Virginia assembly passed a series of Bacon's laws which proclaimed and provided for war against the Indians prohibited trade with them and declared Indian lands deserted and ready for expropriation the laws democratize the vestry or local parish government expanded suffrage to freemen and punished tumults routes etc seeking an official commission against the Indians Bacon visited Jamestown on June 6th 1676 Barkley arrested him for his independent actions during the previous month but pardoned him two days later the governor even restored his natural class ally to his seat on the council of state Bacon fled Jamestown, gathered his forces and returned to the capital within two weeks of the pardon the house of Burgesses granted the commission and Bacon's army spent the next several months once again raiding Indian villages sensing revolution in the winds Barkley withdrew to the eastern shore and Bacon returned to burn the capital on September 19th a few weeks later the bloody flux or the lousy disease killed him and effectively ended his movement in England King Charles dispatched a 1,000 man army and a royal commission to investigate the causes of rebellion the assembly repealed Bacon's laws Colonel Herbert Jeffries assumed the governorship and William Barkley sailed to England to deliver a personal report before the king Virginia concluded peace treaties with the Indian tribes by May 29th 1677 Barkley died a few weeks later successfully returned to England but without having briefed his king Marxist historians Marcus Rettiker and Peter Linebaugh see two Bacon's rebellions the first is a white freeholders war for even bigger freeholds this was the Bacon's rebellion identified by our earlier document the second Bacon's rebellion however hearkened back to that September night when exiled dissenters and African slaves joined hands in the servants plot by September 1676 Bacon promised slaves freedom and servants land these were the Masienelos everywhere Barkley feared so much the rabble, the scum of the country who were so much more alien than Cambridge's own Nathaniel Bacon this abolitionist army was the one pillaging Jamestown and mourning their leader's death the king's negotiator Thomas Grantham arrived in January 1677 to face a 400 man force of black and white rebels Grantham promised the white servants a better deal if they would desert the African slaves and sure enough most of them took the out the last Baconian holdouts included 80 African slaves and just 20 white servants a near reversal of the original black to white ratio in the army Grantham captured their ships during an attempted escape he re-enslaved the lot the ancient strategy divide and conquer rose to a new level of sophistication after Bacon's rebellion continuing earlier patterns and building upon a developing cultural distinction between white liberties and black slavery Virginia officials consciously used the decades after the rebellion to drive a permanent wedge between white servants and black slaves in 1680 the Virginia legislature constricted black liberties with a Negro insurrections act a 1682 law declared that all slaves imported by water that is from Africa were condemned to slavery for life all those imported by land that is Native Americans were bound to a 12 year period of indenture the average term for white indentures remained about 4 to 5 years planters and legislators even shifted to discouraging more poor whites from flooding the colony and replaced unfree white labor with chattels from Africa by 1705 the act concerning servants and slaves fully institutionalized race when once it was merely a set of vague cultural notions about Christian and non-Christian peoples race was now an indication of your naturalized and necessary position within a developing new social order Virginia took differences of skin color and made them irrevocable markers of social, political and economic status the Virginia slave codes became the model virtually all British colonies adopted in succeeding decades they created the modern concept of race just as they were creating the modern world but still there was the libertarian promise of the commons the frontier and the world's remaining ungovernable spaces where the servant and the slave could escape and live together on their own terms Roanoke Island, far to the south of Jamestown and the Lordly Plantations men and women of every description from pirates and slaves to escaped convicts clustered together in Tuscarora Indian country they freely fished and picked traveled where they wilt married without race boundaries it was Virginia's own Marymount or Rhode Island and corners like it kept alive the leveling for later generations of rogues and radicals Liberty Chronicles is a project of Libertarianism.org it is produced by Tess Terrible to learn more about Liberty Chronicles visit Libertarianism.org