The famous revolt in colonial Virginia in 1676 under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon, popularly known as Bacon’s Rebellion, has a great significance in the history of the American Revolution. Taylor and Morgan have been specific about the important role of Bacon’s Rebellion and events surrounding it. They maintain that these events comprise a major development in American history pointing towards the American Revolution and beyond.
Significantly, the historical significance of Bacon’s Rebellion is connected with a set of complex relationships in late 17th century Virginia among the British and American elites, the average white colonists, Indians, and slaves. The ultimate outcome of these events has been the reorganization of the relationship between the elite and average whites which resulted in a strengthening of the notion of freedom. As the higher authorities of the Crown identified an important opportunity in the events related to Bacon’s Rebellion to reinforce the imperial control over the precious colony of Virginia, these events turned out to reorganize the relation between the two distinct groups.
The Rebellion paved the way for the improved relationship between the British and American elites, the average white colonists, Indians, and slaves. The roles of different sections of the society were rearranged and ultimately there was a reorganization of the different relationships. The relations were arranged on the basis of racial differences and the role of the slaves also was determined.
The obsession with racial difference helped the Chesapeake whites to realize a more equal position, regardless of the mounting inequality of their economic circumstances. According to Alan Taylor, “[t]he new sense of racial solidarity rendered white Virginians indifferent to the continuing concentration of most property and real power in the hands of the planter elite.” (Taylor 1650-1750). Therefore, Bacon’s Rebellion had a significant influence on a major development in American history.
An analysis of the history of Bacon’s Rebellion substantiates how the social order was affected by the related events. The rebellion was extensive in nature incorporating every section of the society and different types of people were related to the events directly or indirectly. The existence of slavery in the colonial and early national periods made the most pertinent contribution in the shaping of the American character.
In Virginia, slaves replaced servants and it had a far-reaching effect in the shaping of different relations. According to Edmund S. Morgan, “Slavery led to diverging northern and southern ways of life, Civil War, segregation following emancipation, a new civil rights movement in the 1960s, and ongoing racial tensions down to the present.” (Edmund S). The existence of slavery in a state which demonstrated massive anti-slavery slogans may be a paradox in itself.
However, it is true that the prevalence of slavery in the land had a remarkable influence on determining American nature. The existence of British and American elites in Virginia along with the slaves and the white colonists points to the need for a determined relation among the people. Virginia was conceived as a haven for England’s suffering poor and a forefront of English liberty in an exploited world. Virginia soon became an international haven of liberty and several sects of people settled there. “Men of all countries appeared there: French, Spanish, Dutch, Turkish, Portuguese, and African. Virginia took them in and began to make Englishmen out of them.” (Edmund S).
The poverty-stricken Virginians raised major issues in the power groups. The disturbances among the people of the land served the purpose of the masters and there was the significant contribution made by Bacon’s Rebellion which was the largest accepted rising in the colonies before the American Revolution. Almost every type of people engaged in the rebellion and Virginia’s poor strongly came over the men who owned the land. They imported the servants and began to run the government. Therefore, the rebellion did not have an actual program of reform, ideology, and revolutionary slogans. Therefore, Morgan describes it best as a search for plunder rather than for principles.
As the rebels redistributed the wealth among different sections of the people, the rebellion fell down rapidly. Morgan makes a remarkable comment when he said that slavery was the single factor that made all the difference. He pronounces that there is a great American paradox of slavery and freedom which are entangled and mutually supporting. That is to say, the rights of Englishmen were sustained on the wrongs of Africans. “The American Revolution only made the contradictions more glaring, as the slaveholding colonists proclaimed to a candid world the rights not simply of Englishmen but of all men.” (Edmund S).
In short, it is the move from servitude to slavery in the Virginian state which underlined the essential rearrangement of the social system in America. “Chesapeake planters did not abandon indentured servitude because they preferred slaves; rather, a decline in the traditional labor supply forced planters to recruit workers from new sources, principally but not exclusively from Africa.” (Menard 355‑390.) It was Bacon’s Rebellion that marked the ultimate rearrangements in the society and there was a set of complex relationships between the British and American elites, the average white colonists, Indians, and slaves in late 17th century Virginia. Ultimately, there was a re-ordering of the relationship among the elite and average whites and this had a significant role in the strengthening of the notion of freedom.
Works Cited
Taylor, Alan. American Colonies, The Settling Of North America. Penguin Books. Chesapeake Colonies, 2002.
Morgan, Edmund S., and Wilson,John R. Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox, from: Forging the American Character. Prentice-Hall, 2000.
Menard,Russell R. “From Servants to Slaves: The Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System. Southern Studies,1977.