Notes etc on Bacon's Rebellion

http://www.nps.gov/archive/colo/Jthanout/BacRebel.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon

http://www.virginiaplaces.org/military/bacon.html

History notes:

The colonial government and surrounding natives agreed to a treaty in the 1640's in which native americans relinquished all claimes to land already settled to the english.

The number of land hungry colonists continued to multiply. However, encreaching on native lands and threatning the viability of the treaty.

The colonial government hammered out a fragile peace with the Indians but frontier settlers saw little in these terms that would benefit them.

People following Bacon, rebelling against the government were mainly farmers and others of lower class.

Beneath this dispute about Indian policy, smoldered hostilit between frontier planters and tidewater gentry, between struggling farmers and priveleged granduers.

Nathanial Bacon led frontier settlers, who charged the elite with operating the government for their own private gain and favoring Indian interests over their own.

Elections in 1676 ousted the political elite, and put in power political leaders, including bacon.

The new legislature passed a series of reform measures that favored small planters and the frontier settlers.

Gov Berkley, the gov of Virginia, branded Bacon a traitor; this prompted Bacon and his followers to declare war on the governer and the elite.

Berkley and his men crushed the rebellion, and the elite strengthened their positions.

In the aftermath of the rebellion, tension lessened between great planters and small farmers.

Mainly because the elite recognized that it was safer for colonists to fight Indians rather than each other.

Henceforth, colonial authorities made little effort to restrict settlers' encroachment in Indian lands.

SLAVE LABOR!!--

The most profitible part of the new world empire in the 17c lay in the caribbean, on the tiny island of Barbados, where sugar production fueled the export market.

Sugar production was an expensive proposition made possible by costly machinery, and extensive slave labor. Only the wealthiest planters could participate.

For slaves, work on a sugar plantation was a life sentence to brutal, unremitting labor. Usually only lasting about 5 years into their slaving life.

CAROLINA!!--

The early settlers of what would become South Carolina were immigrants from Barbados

The Barbadian immigrants brought their slaves with them; by 1700, slaves made up about 1/2 of the population.

SLAVE LABOR IN THE CHESAPEAKE!!--

The slave free person ratio remained low in the Chesapeake compared to Carolina; nevertheless, Chesapeake planters began to purchase massive amounts of slaves from 1670-1700

By 1700, about 1 in 8 peoplein the region was a black person from Africa.

The slave labor system polarized Chesapeake society along lines of race and status.

Most whites of the Chesapeake did not own slaves. Despite this, tensions from economic stratification among whites was muted by the fundamental distinction between slave (black) and free (whites.)