Criminal
02-02-2002, 10:47 PM
America's first Revolution
A mere 70 years after the colony of Virginia was founded, white frontiersmen, joined by slaves and servants staged a revolt so enormous that it jepordised he capital of Jamestown and required British troops from across the Atlantic to surpress it. The leader was a 29 year old landowner by the name of Nathaniel Bacon.
The purpose of this rebellion was complex. The initial reason was in regards to the indians of the frontier. White settlers in the Virginia mountains acquired a tast for independence and at the same time a hatred for the indian population. The powerful aristocrats of the coastal regions sought to use the indians as a buffer to keep the frontiersmen in check. They had greatly feared the growing independence of frontier settlements.
The year of 1676 was a bad year for crops and there was much poverty. The poor people of the frontier were eager recruits for Bacon's cause. They resented the coastal aristocrats and indians alike. Bacon and his men attacked indian settlements with great brutality. During the course of the rebellion Bacon fell ill and died. Then the British arrived and the rebellion ended virtually without a shot. The Brittish troops promised a pardon, but Thomas Grantham instead took the group prisoner. 23 rebel leaders were hanged.
Historian Howard Zinn writes in "A People's History of the United States" :
It was a complex chain of oppression in Virginia. THe Indians were plundered by white frontiersmen, who were taxed and controlled by the Jamestown elite. And the who colony was being exploited by England, which bought the colonists' tobacco at prices it dictated and made 100,000 pounds a year for the king.
It was a common state of affairs in the colonies that a rigid system of class existed. Bacon's rebellion especially alarmed members of the aristocracy because of the numbers of black slaves who joined the ranks of the rebels. It is widely believes that this experience caused the first of many laws forbidding coexistance of any kind between blacks and whites.
In 1682 a law in South Carolina was passed requiring plantation owners to have at least one white servents for every six adult black servents. A letter complained "no white men to superintend our negros, or to repress an insurrection."
Thus began the first segragation laws in what would now be the United States.
A mere 70 years after the colony of Virginia was founded, white frontiersmen, joined by slaves and servants staged a revolt so enormous that it jepordised he capital of Jamestown and required British troops from across the Atlantic to surpress it. The leader was a 29 year old landowner by the name of Nathaniel Bacon.
The purpose of this rebellion was complex. The initial reason was in regards to the indians of the frontier. White settlers in the Virginia mountains acquired a tast for independence and at the same time a hatred for the indian population. The powerful aristocrats of the coastal regions sought to use the indians as a buffer to keep the frontiersmen in check. They had greatly feared the growing independence of frontier settlements.
The year of 1676 was a bad year for crops and there was much poverty. The poor people of the frontier were eager recruits for Bacon's cause. They resented the coastal aristocrats and indians alike. Bacon and his men attacked indian settlements with great brutality. During the course of the rebellion Bacon fell ill and died. Then the British arrived and the rebellion ended virtually without a shot. The Brittish troops promised a pardon, but Thomas Grantham instead took the group prisoner. 23 rebel leaders were hanged.
Historian Howard Zinn writes in "A People's History of the United States" :
It was a complex chain of oppression in Virginia. THe Indians were plundered by white frontiersmen, who were taxed and controlled by the Jamestown elite. And the who colony was being exploited by England, which bought the colonists' tobacco at prices it dictated and made 100,000 pounds a year for the king.
It was a common state of affairs in the colonies that a rigid system of class existed. Bacon's rebellion especially alarmed members of the aristocracy because of the numbers of black slaves who joined the ranks of the rebels. It is widely believes that this experience caused the first of many laws forbidding coexistance of any kind between blacks and whites.
In 1682 a law in South Carolina was passed requiring plantation owners to have at least one white servents for every six adult black servents. A letter complained "no white men to superintend our negros, or to repress an insurrection."
Thus began the first segragation laws in what would now be the United States.