Bacon's Rebellion- Bacon’s Rebellion took place in 1676. 1,000 freedmen took down an Indian revolt, torched Jamestown, and chased William Berkeley out of town (he was the governor). So What?
1. Nathaniel Bacon was a wealthy Cambridge educated English aristocrat who arrived in Virginia in 1674 after a scandal in England. His family sent him to Virginia where he received a substantial land grant and a seat on the council by his cousin by marriage Governor Sir William Berkeley. Bacon became angry when Berkeley refused him a commission to lead a campaign against the Indians.
Bacon’s followers into rebellion. Frances Berkeley’s statement was witnessed and signed by Sir William, Sir Henry Chicheley, a member of the Council of State, the Reverend John Clough, rector of James City Parish, and Captain James Crews. The latter’s presence at Green Spring is puzzling.19 Crews had urged Bacon to take the illegal action of leading armed men against the Indians without a commission from Berkeley. He was executed at Green Spring in January 1677 for his part in the rebellion. Crews may have visited the Berkeleys after his election to the June Assembly, 1676, perhaps to try and bring about some resolution of the struggle between Berkeley and Bacon.
The English settlers in the American colonies were acting as independent states well before the American Revolution took place in 1775. There are numerous examples when the English colonist decided to act on their own accord and sometimes disobey direct orders of the crown. In this essay I will outline the numerous ways that the English colonist started to defy orders from the English crown and explain how it lead to the colonists fight for independence.
Bacon’s Rebellion is well known to students of colonial America, although no-one has succeeded in writing a convincing account of it. The first question historians asked was who was responsible for the widespread anarchy that followed the breakdown of government authority in the colony between 1676 and 1677. One historian attributes the rebellion to Nathaniel Bacon, and describes Governor Berkeley as a man doing his best to implement sensible policies. Another sees the Rebellion as prefiguring the American Revolution, with Bacon as an early George Washington, already defying British authority.
In Ben Franklin’s case, it started as a hobby, which made him learn about a variety of subjects. “This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repair'd in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me” (Franklin, 61). The original plan for Franklin was either to become an apprentice, like his brothers, or to become a church official. Although, he spent hours learning by himself, and used this knowledge to aid him in his quest for more. Essentially, the initiative Franklin portrays in his dedication for learning was crucial to his successes later in life.
From the American Revolution to the 1950s, the most common understanding of Bacon's Rebellion was that it was a precursor of the American Revolution, a premature revolt against British tyranny that represented but a temporary setback for American liberty. American revolution, in no way, can it ever be compared it Bacon’s rebellion. The key concepts American revolution was liberty and democracy -- which there was none found in Bacon’s rebellion.
Nathaniel Bacon is one of the few rebellious people whose name has been taught from school to school in America. “Why is that?” , you may ask, “Why him? Why is his rebellion significant in American history?”. Bacon’s rebellion used to be seen as the start of the American Revolution, but now, modern historians have uncovered the truth of the Virginian Rebellion of 1676.
Born in 1706 as the eighth of 17 children to a Massachusetts soap and candlestick maker, the chances Benjamin Franklin would go on to become a gentleman, scholar, scientist, statesman, musician, author, publisher and all-around general genius were astronomically low, yet he did just that. Franklin wrote in the Age of Enlightenment, an intellectual revolution in the 18th century. The ideals of the enlightenment are still thought of today, as they are a part of the United States’ Declaration of Independence and Constitution. When one remembers Benjamin Franklin very few people are aware of the fact that he worked as a printer until the age of 42. As a printer he had access to substantial amounts of literature.
As the English tried to remake New Netherland into New York and the French attempted to transform New France, Maryland and Virginia experienced drastic changes. These contributed to, and were accelerated by, Bacon’s Rebellion a complex set of events in 1675–1676 that involved war between colonists and Indians as well as a civil war in which whites of every social rank and enslaved Africans joined to topple Virginia’s governor. By the early 1680s, Virginia resembled Barbados. It too had become a society dependent on slavery and founded on the principle of white supremacy. Bacon’s Rebellion remade Virginia’s borders and its politics.
You may ask yourself, what even is a rebellion? A rebellion is the act of defying a group of people or a certain person and turning your back on them. Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion put a mark on everything. This was probably one of the biggest rebellions in history. This dates back to the 1600’s.
Howard Zinn discussed the actuality of Colonial America, in which the wealthy handled poor whites, black slaves, and Native Americans as undesirables. Zinn’s thesis was the idea of plutocracy, government by the wealthy, controlling American society. Class lines hardened, distinctions between rich and poor became sharper. Wealth equated to power, slaves, and estate subsequently, fortifying their superiority over the disadvantaged. This inequality of wealth and power caused disapprobation among the impoverished populace and defiances such as Bacon’s Rebellion undertook.
Nathaniel Bacon and a group of five-hundred militiamen marched toward a quiet peaceful Native American settlement. These Native Americans were the Pamunkey people, allies to the colonist of Jamestown. Bacon and his men soon reached the the opening to the village and began to open fire. Bacon 's Rebellion began in 1676 in the colony of Jamestown. This rebellion was a revolt lead by a young Englishman named Nathaniel Bacon against Governor Sir William Berkeley.
Darwin and Bacon (The Analysis of the Concurrences between Darwin and Bacon) The anomaly that is the Earth works in strange ways, while failing to balance on one foot all one has to do is place one finger on the wall and you are safe from crashing to the ground. This phenomenon seems to suggest that all things are connected; however there is a delicate balance to be maintained. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection proposes that there is a balance that allows for the life on Earth to maintain the equilibrium of evolution. On the other hand, Francis Bacon composed an idea of the levels of the mind called the four idols which obstructed the path for scientific reasoning and observation.
Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon were both the children of modern thought and modern science. They tried to revolutionize the old scholastic way of thought and learning. Descartes was considered the first modern philosopher and Cartesian philosophy won many followers in the 17th century. Bacon, too, was highly influential and his theories on the organization of the sciences had a great effect on the sciences in his time and into the future. So Both Descartes and Bacon had great roles in the Scientific Revolution.
