Arms and Armour

Bacon's Rebellion

Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion by Virginia settlers and their indentured servants and slaves, that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley, after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive American Indians out of Virginia. Thousands of Virginians from all classes (including those in indentured servitude and slavery) and races revolted against Berkeley, chasing him out from Jamestown and ultimately torching the settlement. The rebellion was first suppressed by a few armed English merchant ships from London whose captains sided with Governor Berkeley and the English loyalists, against the rebellious English settlers of Virginia, and their servitude/enslaved allies. Government forces led by Herbert Jeffreys arrived soon after and spent several years defeating pockets of resistance and reforming the colonial government to be once more under direct Crown control. While the colonial forces did not succeed in the initial goal of driving the American Indians out from Virginia, it did result in Berkeley being recalled to England, where he died shortly thereafter. Bacon's rebellion was the first rebellion in the British Thirteen colonies and North American colonies overall, in which discontented frontiersmen colonists took part. A somewhat similar uprising in Maryland involving John Coode and Josias Fendall took place in 1689. The alliance between European indentured servants and Black Africans (a mix of indentured, enslaved, and Free Negroes) under the English settlers of Virginia, had disturbed the European colonial upper class. They responded by hardening the racial caste of slavery in an attempt to divide the two races (European servants and black African slaves), in an attempt to prevent subsequent united uprisings against them, with the passage of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705.

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See also

• ▸Cuirass
• ▸Duel in the Sun (film)
• ▸89th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery

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