USA > Virginia > Virginia, a history of the people > Part 19
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So all was peace at last, and there were to be no more heart-burnings. Blessed harmony was to replace the wrangling, and general amnesty to heal old sores. The repentant rebel was forgiven and restored to his seat in the Council (to keep him out of the Burgesses), and as he had promised to live civilly he deserved to be treated civilly and have his commission. This was Saturday ; the peaceful Sabbath would quiet all minds ; on Mon- day he should be commissioned " General of the Indian Wars "- perhaps.
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XV.
A SCENE IN THE BURGESSES.
IT may interest the reader to look in now on the Bur- gesses, up-stairs in the State House, and find how they were engaged a few days afterwards, when the "bruit ran about the town 'Bacon is fled ! Bacon is fled !'" It is almost the only picture we have of that famous old body of Virginia planters. We scarcely know more of their ways than that, in addressing the Speaker, the cus- tom was to take off the hat. Here is the chance photo- graph of these honest people.
Sir William Berkeley, after the scene of Bacon's con- fession, had dismissed them with the injunction to "con- sider of means of security from the Indian insults, ad- vising us to beware of two rogues amongst us, naming Lawrence and Drummond." These were known friends of Bacon's and afterwards leaders in the rebellion ; but the Burgesses did not obey Sir William's directions, like a dutiful Parliament, and consider the Indian matters. They " took this opportunity to endeavor the redressing several grievances the country was then laboring under; and motions were made for inspecting the public revenues, the collectors accounts, etc." A committee was in process of appointment for that improper and rebellious purpose, when pressing messages came from the Governor " to meddle with nothing till the Indian business was dis- patcht." The " debate rose high " at this arbitrary in- vasion of privilege, growls resounded and fulminations were uttered by the disgusted Baconians ; but they were overruled, and Mr. T. M., who tells us of all this, says
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A SCENE IN THE BURGESSES.
briefly, " I have not heard that those inspections have since then been insisted upon."
Then another struggle takes place between the Ba- conians and the Berkeleyans. A committee is appointed to consider the Indian affairs, when a Berkeleyan moves that the Governor be requested " to assign two of his Council to sit with and assist us in our debates as had been usual." Thereat the Baconians are " silent, look- ing each at other with discontented faces." So the com- mittee is to deliberate under the eye and influence of the Governor and the Council; whereupon Mr. T. M. of Stafford speaks up bravely in his quiet way. His humble opinion is that the committee had better report to the House first, before requesting the presence of the Counselors, when the House " would clearly see on what points to give the Governor and Council that trouble if, perhaps, it might be needfull."
These " few words raised an uproar." The Berkeley- ans cried out that it had been customary for the Council to sit with the House, and " ought not to be omitted." Thereat " Mr. Presly, my neighbor an old Assembly- man, sitting next me, rose up and (in a blundering man- ner replied) : ''Tis true it has been customary, but if we have any bad customes amongst us we are come here to mend 'em !'"
This rough witticism of the old Assembly-man " sets the House in a laughter," but the whole matter is " hud- dled off without coming to a vote " ; and so, groans poor T. M. of Stafford, we "must submit to be overawed and have every carpt at expression carried streight to the Gov- ernor."
This trivial incident strikes the key note of Bacon's Assembly, which followed the Virginia Long Parliament of 1660-76. It is the mouth piece of the new times,
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" much infected " with rebellion; restive, disposed to inquire into public grievances; to resent attempts to overawe it ; and to burst into approving laughter at the " blundering " statement that " if we have any bad cus- toms amongst us we have come here to mend 'em."
To linger a little longer with these honest Virginia Burgesses : a curious and very picturesque scene fol- lowed this brief passage-of-arms as to bad old customs. The Burgesses are considering Indian affairs and have a distinguished visitor present, the "Queen of Pamun- key," who has been summoned, it seems, to say how many Indian guides and fighting-men she would supply the Virginians with against the frontier tribes. She was the queen of the neighboring Indians who had made the solemn treaty of 1645, and had received, or received afterwards, from Charles II., a present of a silver " frontlet " with a coat-of-arms upon it inscribed "The Queen of Pamunkey - Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland, and Virginia, - Honi soit qui mal y pense ;" evil be to him who pre- sumed to find fault with his Majesty's recognition of his royal cousin. The appearance of the Indian queen on this occasion was picturesque. Around her forehead she wore a plait of white and black wampum by way of crown. Her dress was a robe of buckskin with the hair outward decorated with fringes from the shoulders to the feet. She entered the long room, where the Bur- gesses were sitting, " with a comportment graceful to admiration, grave court-like gestures and a majestic air on her face;" an interpreter on her right, and on her left, her son, a stripling of twenty, whose father was said to be an English Colonel. After a little urging she sat down at the end of the long committee table, when
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the chairman asked her " What men she would lend us for guides in the wilderness and to assist us against our enemy Indians ? "
At this she turned to the interpreter, pretending not to understand English. She wished her son to reply, but he declined to do so, when the Queen, " after a lit- tle musing, with an earnest passionate countenance, as if tears were ready to gush out, and a fervent sort of ex- pression," burst forth in her own lauguage. She spoke " with a high shrill voice and vehement passion," but no one understood her. One expression she constantly re- peated, "Totapotamoi chepiack ! Totapotamoi chepiack !" At this, one of the Burgesses, Colonel Hill, son of the commander defeated by the Ricahecrians twenty years before, shook his head, and being asked " what was the matter ?" replied, that " all she said was true to our shame ; his father was General in that battle, where Totapotamoi, her husband, had led a hundred Indians to the help of the Englishi, and was there slain." He added that the Indian Queen was now upbraiding them for giving her no compensation for the death of her husband : her vehement cry, " Totapotamoi chepiack ! " signified "Totapotamoi is dead !"
The poor Queen of Pamunkey "harangued about a quarter of an hour," but they scarce understood her. " Our morose chairman " remained unmoved, and when she ended "rudely pushed again" his previous ques- tion : " What Indians will you now contribute ?" The Queen made no reply, preserving a " disdainful" si- lence, with her head turned away. When the question was asked for the third time, she looked toward the speaker and said, " with a low slighting voice," that she would furnish six. Further importuned she re
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mained "sullen," but at last said " twelve." Then she rose and without taking further notice of any one walked out of the room.
These chance-preserved scenes in the old Burgesses are worth attention. They paint the men and times, which we wish above all to see. In Hening we have the record of the public acts of this famous " Baconian " Assembly ; their redress of grievances, their extension of suffrage again, and their somewhat mild ventilation of official corruptions. It is only on some such page as this that we see the men themselves ; hear their blun- dering jests and laughter; and have them before us gravely listening, in committee, to the high shrill voice of the poor Queen of Pamunkey who upbraids them for having forgotten her dead husband.
Let us come back now to " General Bacon " as peo- ple are beginning to call him, as they spoke of "Gen- eral Cromwell " in the old times in England so similar to these Virginia times. The scene in the Burgesses occurred in the days immediately following the famous ceremony of the public confession. That event took place on Saturday, and on Monday Bacon was to have his commission. But on Monday no commission comes. Tuesday and Wednesday follow and yet no commission.
Bacon is lodging all this time at a house of public entertainment kept by the wife of a certain "thoughtful Mr. Lawrence," one of the Burgesses representing Jamestown. It is the custom of householders there to open their houses to the Burgesses during the sessions of the Assembly, from which they make great profits, for they charge "extraordinary rates." And Mr. Law- rence needs money. He has been ruined by Governor Berkeley. Some years before he had been "partially
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A SCENE IN THE BURGESSES.
treated at law for a considerable estate, on behalf of a corrupt favourite " of his Excellency's. He had thus lost his estate, and as he had " complained loudly," the Governor " bore him a grudge." The grudge was cor- dially reciprocated, and when Mr. Lawrence referred to Sir William he spoke of that functionary as " the old treacherous villain." There was thus animosity on both sides, and Berkeley had warned the Burgesses against " the rogue Lawrence," as a treason-monger. He was a dangerous man, in fact; not by any means an ordi- nary tavern-keeper, though he kept an ordinary. He was a graduate of Oxford, " and for wit, learning, and sobriety, was equaled there by few," - though some called in question his private morals. He manifested "abundance of uneasiness in the sense of his hard usage " by Governor Berkeley, and perhaps meant to " improve that Indian quarrel to the service of his ani- mosities ;" but he was " nicely honest, affable, and without blemish, in his conversation and dealings." He had married a rich widow who kept the ordinary, to which resorted people "of the best quality." His " parts with his even temper made his converse coveted by persons of all ranks," and into these he instilled his own views on public subjects. To sum up all, this thoughtful Mr. Lawrence was "at the bottom of " everything ; and " the received opinion in Virginia " was that " Mr. Bacon and his adherents were but wheels agitated by the weight " of this subtle foe of Sir Wil- liam Berkeley.
This portrait of Lawrence is given in the words of one who knew him well. It leaves nothing in the dark. The Oxford man has been wronged by the Governor, hates him, will do him an ill turn if possible, and
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regain his lost estate by fishing in the troubled waters of rebellion. At his ordinary, therefore, he goes to and fro affable and smiling, filtrating his rebellious poison into men of all ranks ; and now Mr. Bacon, lodging with him, while awaiting his promised commission, is to have the full outpouring.
How far the impetuous "young stranger," Mr. Bacon, came to meet his " subtle " friend, is not known. It Is tolerably certain that of his own motion, or urged by Lawrence, he resolved to get out of Jamestown and open war on the Governor. It was obvious that he was not going to have any commission. It was exceedingly doubtful, indeed, whether he would be permitted to leave tlie Capital ; and much " disgusted, but dissembling the same so well as he could," he resorted to policy, and going to the Governor, begged leave of him " to dis- pense with his services at the Council table, to visit his wife, who, as she informed him, was indisposed."
Berkeley listened to this request in silence, and said at last that he must consult his Council. He did so, and they advised him not to allow Bacon to go; but " after some contest with his thoughts" the Governor gave him permission. The reason for this liberality was not far to seek. Bacon's friends " from the lieads of the rivers," had flocked into Jamestown at the ru- mor of his arrest. The Capital was still full of these truculent people, anxious to know about matters, and it would not be advisable openly to refuse Bacon's request. It was therefore granted ; but the up-country men finding that Bacon and his friends in the sloop were released, " returned home satisfied," when Governor Berkeley at once determined to rearrest his dangerous enemy.
These details may appear unduly minute, but they
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A SCENE IN THE BURGESSES. 257
give the complete picture of events; and a service is done the reader by disentangling them from the old con- fused narratives. The denoument soon came. Early one morning, while the Burgesses were giving audience to the Queen of Pamunkey, "a bruit ran about the town, 'Bacon is fled! Bacon is fled !'" The bruit was true. Bacon had escaped on the night before. His old cousin in the Council, who had a weakness for his rebel kinsman, had conveyed " timely intimation to the young gentleman to flee for his life." At daylight Lawrence's ordinary was searched by officers sent by the Governor, but the bird had flitted from that danger- ous nest. Bacon " was escaped into the country, hav- ing intimation that the Governor's generosity in par- doning him, and restoring him to his place in the Council, were no other than previous wheedles to amuse him."
Bacon was thus free of his enemy's clutches, and among his faithful Baconians again. Writers of the time speculate wisely on all these entangled matters. It was not his wife's sickness, but the " troubles of a distempered mind," which made the young rebel anx- ious to get away ; " which in a few days was manifest when that he returned to town with five hundred men in arms."
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Had Bacon resolved to return in that fashion with the aim of effecting more than simple wresting a com- mission from Sir William Berkeley? It is probable. He and thoughtful Mr. Lawrence had no doubt held many private talks in those days and nights at the Jamestown ordinary. The country was on fire. Men's minds were ripe for rebellion. All Virginia was shout- ing, " Bacon ! Bacon!" as the men of Gloucester did
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afterwards in the very presence of Berkeley. The mo- ment had come, it seemed, for mixing up other matters with the Indian question.
Bacon's escape had unknotted all the tangle, which was to be tied in a tighter knot still. A few days after- wards came the dread rumor that he was marching on Jamestown at the head of six hundred men.
XVI.
BACON AND BERKELEY AT JAMES CITY.
THE rumor was true. Fiery General Bacon was no longer the anxious husband, and had quite forgotten, it seemed, that Elizabeth, his wife, was " indisposed." In- stead of staying at home at Curles, and soothing the sick lady, - who was probably not so sick,1 - lie had been riding to and fro at the "heads of the rivers " sounding the slogan.
At the word his friends rose in arms ; a part of that "eight thousand horse," which Governor Berkeley had reported to be in the colony. The times were now ripe, and the mass of the Virginia people had sided with Bacon. They hastened from plantation and hundred, from lowland manor-house and log cabin in the woods of the upland, " well-armed housekeepers " booted and armed with good broadswords and "fusils " for the wars that were plainly coming.
A force variously estimated at from four to six hun- dred men thus hastened to Bacon's flag. It is safe to go beyond the record, if we are ever allowed to do so,
1 " Begs leave to visit his lady (now sick as he pretended)."-An Cotton's Account.
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BACON AND BERKELEY AT JAMES CITY.
and state that the leader of the rising made them one of his passionate addresses. He was always ready for that : the vehement thought seemed ever behind the ar- dent lips in this man, longing to burst forth into fiery speech. Bacon was a born orator, but a man of de- cision also. In "three or ffour days after his escape " he was within a day's march of Jamestown, at the head of his six hundred " housekeepers."
At this ominous rumor Berkeley acted with vigor. He was quite as brave as his young adversary, in spite of the seventy years' snows on his hair. He sent an instant summons for the " train-bands " of York and Gloucester ; but the poison had begun to work every- where. Only about "one hundred soulders, and not one half of them sure neather," marched at his order; and their advance was so sluggish that Bacon ar- rived before they were in sight. He entered James- town at the head of his men at about two o'clock in the afternoon, and drew up his troops, " horse and foot, upon a green, not a flight (arrow) shot from the end of the State House." His followers had seized all the avenues, disarming " all in town," and as others arrived in boats or by land they were arrested or disarmed in like fashion.
Jamestown had thus suddenly become a scene of vast confusion and uneasy expectation. Sir William Berke- ley and his Council were in a private apartment of the State House holding a council of war. Bacon's drums and trumpets had only sounded hitherto ; now the drum which always summoned the Assembly was heard rolling. The Burgesses came to order - if there was indeed order of any sort that day in the distracted borough; and an armed collision between law and re-
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
bellion seemed about to follow. Bacon advanced across the green " with a file of fusileers on either hand," and came up to the corner of the State House. Then what followed is described by worthy Mr. T. M. of Stafford, who witnessed all from a window of the room above in which the Assembly sat, or rather stood in crowding groups at the windows watching the scene. The Gov- ernor and Council came out and Bacon advanced to meet them. He seemed to be controlling himself, but Berkeley was thoroughly aroused, and incensed. He walked straight toward Bacon, and tearing open the lace at his breast, exclaimed wrathfully :-
"Here ! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair mark - shoot !"
This he repeated over and over, using the same ex- pression and no other. Bacon's reply, in spite of his anger, was deliberate : --
" No, may it please your honor," he said, "we will not hurt a hair of your head, nor of any other man's. We are come for a commission to save our lives from the Indians, which you have so often promised, and now we will have it before we go."
But mild as his words seemed, Bacon was in a rage. As the Governor and Council turned round and went back to their private apartment, he followed them with his fusileers, his left arm "akimbo," the hand on his sword hilt, and his right arm tossed about like one "dis- tracted." Berkeley was throwing about his own arm in the same manner. Bacon's demeanor grew more and more threatening as the Governor and Council retreated. He " strutted" after them " with outrageous postures of his head, arms, body and legs, often tossing his hand from his sword to his hat; and after him came a de-
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tachment of ffusileers (musketts not being then in use), who, with their cocks bent, presented their ffusils at a window of the Assembly Chamber filled with faces, re- peating with menacing voices, ' We will have it! We will have it!' every half minute."
These words of the cotemporary narrative best de- scribe the scene. One of the Burgesses of the Bacon party shook his handkerchief from the window, calling out three or four times, " You shall have it ! You shall have it!" meaning the commission ; and at this assur- ance the fusileers uncocked their guns, and waited for further orders from Bacon. He had followed the Governor with an "impetuous like delirious action," exclaiming violently :-
" Damn my blood ! I'll kill Governor, Council, Assembly and all, and then I'll sheathe my sword in my own heart's blood."
And it was afterwards said, we are told by Mr. T. M. of Stafford, that Bacon had ordered his men, if he drew his sword, to fire on the Assembly - " so near was the massacre of us all that very minute, had Bacon but drawn his sword before the pacific handkerchief was shaken out at window."
What occurred in the private apartment between Ba- con, Governor, and Council is not known ; probably the excitement of the moment prevented any definite action. Bacon came out and about an hour afterwards made his appearance in the Assembly Chamber up-stairs where he addressed the Burgesses, asking for a commission. The Speaker, who was a Baconian, declared that it was " not in their province, or power, nor of any other save the King's vicegerent, their Governor, to grant it;" but Bacon insisted and made "half an hour's harangue."
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Its purport is summed up in a sentence. It was all about "preserving our lives from the Indians, inspecting the public revenues, the exorbitant taxes, and redressing the grievances and calamities of that deplorable country." The revolution thus announced its objects : not protec- tion from Indians only, but a general redress of griev- ances and civil reform, sweeping out official vermin. The Burgesses hesitated, and took no action, and Bacon " went away dissatisfied." But the next day Governor and Council yielded ; the Burgesses appointed Nathan- iel Bacon General and Commander-in-Chief against the Indians ; the appointment was ratified by Berkeley ; and an act was passed granting pardon to Bacon and his followers for their Indian proceedings. A letter was even drafted to the King highly applauding them, and this also the Governor and Council were obliged to sign.
It was an immense triumph for the young rebel. Berkeley writhed and growled, but was disarmed and powerless. He took his revenge by sending to the As- sembly a letter of his own to the King, in which he wrote : "I have for above thirty years governed the most flourishing country the sun ever shone over, but am now encompassed with rebellion, like waters, in every respect like that of Masaniello, except their leader," - meaning, doubtless, that Bacon was not an ignorant fisherman, but a man of rank and brains who was much more dangerous.
The Burgesses were then dissolved, and went back to their homes, - a brief session, over which the historians have raised a great pæan. The fact that it sat in June, 1676, and that in June, 1776, the same body instructed the Virginia delegates to propose independence of Eng-
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BACON AND BERKELEY AT JAMES CITY.
land, has been much dwelt upon. But no deliberate attempt was made to go to the root of the public griev- ances. All was hurry and excitement, and after extend- ing the suffrage, and passing laws against the sale in ordinaries of intoxicating drinks, and others denouncing " tumults, routs, and riots," which was rather anti-Ba- conian, the Burgesses went home.
Bacon was now at the head of a small army, the regularly commissioned General-in-Chief of the Virginia forces, nominally against the Indians, but really against whomsoever he chose. All things in the Dominion of Virginia were virtually under his control. An im- mense public sentiment supported him ; he held the colony in his grasp; and the authority of Governor Berkeley was only a simulacrum. What would be his next step? It was noticed that thoughtful Mr. Law- rence had much talk with him at this time, and was "esteemed Mr. Bacon's principal consultant ; " also "Mr. Drummond, a sober Scotch gentleman of good repute," who had been lately the Governor of North Carolina. He, too, was a foc of Berkeley's, on some grounds of his own, and was heard to say: "I am in, over shoes ; I will be over boots." He lived at Jamestown, and these two "rogues," as his Excellency called them, were far too intimate with the fiery young General to suit Sir William. Would they induce him to forget his Indian business, and think of other things? Bacon seemed to decide that by promptly marching against the Indians.
He made his head-quarters then, as afterwards, near West Point, at the head of York River; the place was sometimes called "De la War," from Lord Dela- ware, whose family name was West ; and here he dis- armed the loyalists of Gloucester. He then set out,
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with a force variously estimated at from five hundred to one thousand men, to attack the Indians toward the head waters of the Pamunkey.
All his movements were full of energy, and met with that good fortune which follows the possession of brains and decision. Parties of horse were sent in every di- rection to scour the woods and ferret out the Indians ; and the result of these measures, the chronicles say, was an unheard-of sense of security in the border plan- tations. It seemed, indeed, that young General Bacon was justifying the public opinion of him. He had wrested his commission from the Governor, but he was not using it to the hurt of the government. He was fighting the public enemy, and doing his duty as an honest Virginian.
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