Bacon's Rebellion

In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt against the colonial government of Virginia because of ongoing hostilities with the local Native Americans (Frantz, 1969, p. v). The origins of the rebellion dated back some seven decades according to Michael Olberg (Wiseman, 2005, p. 1-10), with the establishment of Jamestown in 1607. During this period, the Virginia colony cycled through booms and busts economically, but inevitably at the expense of the local Native American tribes. The Natives would occasionally fight back by massacring hundreds of settlers, but by 1644 the English had subdued the local tribes.

The colony began to thrive and by 1660 the population had reached 25,000 (Wiseman, 2005, p. 5-10). The inevitable result was increased pressure on settlers to buy or steal land occupied by the local Natives. The Virginia assembly in 1662 sought to maintain peace by codifying an outright prohibition against this practice and...
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