Berkeley an Oppressor: Bacon and Sir John Berry
In the strength of these popular pledges, Bacon proceeded against the savages. The governor, alarmed by the demonstration at the Middle Plantation, fled, with some of his council, to the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, where, by promises of booty, he tried to raise an army among the inhabitants and the seamen of English ships in the ports. This movement demanded prompt action on the part of Bacon. With this leader was the brave William Drummond, who had been the first governor of North Carolina. He was accompanied by his wife Sarah, who was as brave as he. She did much to inspire the Virginians-civilians and soldiers-with courage to go on in revolution; and she was denounced as a "notorious and wicked rebel." When her husband proposed to declare Berkeley's flight from Jamestown to be an abdication of government, and the appointment of another in his place, and it was suggested that a power would then come from England that would ruin the republicans of the colony, Sarah Drummond, who knew that the realm was then distracted by factions, snatched up a small stick from the ground, and exclaimed: "I fear the power of England no more than a broken straw. The child that is unborn," she said, "shall have cause to rejoice for the good that will come by the rising of the country."
Drummond's proposition was agreed to. Government in the colony was declared to be abdicated by Berkeley, and that he was fomenting civil war; and Bacon and four of his colleagues issued writs for a representative convention of the people. Meanwhile Berkeley had gathered a motley host of followers on the eastern shore, many of them allured by hopes of plunder. He had proclaimed freedom to the slaves of "rebels" who should join his standard. The English vessels on that coast were placed at his service, and some Indians joined him. With this army under the command of Major Beverly, in five ships and ten sloops, the governor sailed for Jamestown, and landed there early in September. After offering thanksgiving for his safe arrival, he again proclaimed Nathaniel Bacon a traitor.
The republican leader was taken by surprise. He had but a few followers in arms; but the news spread swiftly through the forests and over the plantations, and very soon Bacon was at the head of brave Virginians marching toward their capital. On their way, they seized as hostages or pledges of honor on the part of their husbands the wives of royalists who were with Berkeley.
On a moonlit evening the republicans appeared before Jamestown, and cast up an intrenchment. In vain the governor urged his troops to go out and attack them. His men were not made of stuff for soldiers. Only the seamen showed pluck, and they were too few to do much. At length the royalists stole away in their ships by night and compelled the indignant governor to follow them. Then Bacon entered Jamestown-the only village in all Virginia-and assumed the reins of civil power. He was startled by a rumor that the royalists of the upper counties were coming down upon him. In a council of war it was resolved to burn the capital, that no shelter might remain for an enemy. At twilight the torch was applied, and the blaze of the conflagration was seen by the royalists on the ships, far down the James River. Drummond set fire to his own house-one of the best in the village-as a sacrifice to freedom. So perished the first town founded in America by Englishmen. It was never rebuilt. No vestige of it remains but the ruins of the church tower and a few monuments in the graveyard near it.
Bacon now hastened to meet the royalists from the north. These were not disposed to fight, and in a body they deserted their leader and joined the patriots. The royalists of Gloucester yielded their allegiance to Bacon, and he resolved to cross the Chesapeake and drive the cavaliers and their adherents out of Virginia. But a deadlier foe than these now attacked the republican leader. The malaria from the marshes around Jamestown poisoned his blood, and he died of a malignant fever on the 11th of October, 1676. There was no man to receive his mantle of authority and influence, and his departure paralyzed the cause he had espoused. His followers made but a feeble resistance thereafter, and before the first of November Governor Berkeley returned to the Middle Plantation and resumed the functions of government. Nathaniel Bacon failed, and he is embalmed in history as a rebel. Had he succeeded, he would have been immortalized as a patriot.
The vexations and fatigues which Berkeley had endured in his contest with the republicans soured his haughty temper and made him very miserable. He signalized his return to power by acts of wanton cruelty. His king had proclaimed Bacon to be a traitor, and sent an armament under Sir John Berry to assist in crushing the rebellion in Virginia. These were the first royal troops sent to America to suppress the aspirations of the people for freedom. The incident was repeated a hundred years later when Howe, Clinton, Cornwallis and Burgoyne were here, like Sir John Berry, leading British troops to suppress a more formidable and successful uprising of Americans in favor of the rights of man.