Becoming Americans (28 page)

      As the new Burgesses arrived in James Town to convene the Assembly, word got back to the approaching Bacon that he was to be arrested. Bacon fled back up the James River to his large holdings near the falls of the James. He was followed, seized, and taken to James Town. His elderly relative, the loyal and stately Nathaniel Bacon, Senior, convinced him to apologize to the Governor—on bended knee!

      "Governor Berkeley was overly quick and generous to restore Bacon to the Council, I thought at first," Sarah Biggs told Anne. "But at least he can keep an eye on the scoundrel." That Bacon would keep his seat in the House of Burgesses, too, would have been unthinkable. Anne was reassured upon hearing of the action.

      "Bacon's Assembly," as it came to be called, immediately declared war on the Indians—the platform of their election—and declared Bacon the commander of the army. The Governor relented and agreed to issue the commission. Bacon became impatient with subsequent delays and left for his plantation. Within a week he returned to the State House with five hundred men.

      "God damn my blood, I came for a commission, and a commission I will have before I go!" Bacon had shouted.

      That alone would have been enough to harden Sarah Biggs against him. Bacon was infamous for his swearing, inventing oaths to amuse himself and friends, and to cower enemies with his wrath.

      Governor Berkeley was equally dramatic, Sarah admitted, though he was not blasphemous. He had bared his chest and taunted Bacon, "Here! Shoot me, foregod, fair mark, shoot." He went on that way, challenging the younger man to a duel to decide the matter.

      Bacon would return to his favorite of "Damn my blood!" and finally, "Damn my blood, I'll kill Governor, Council, and all!"

      The terrified Assembly implored the Governor to grant the commission. At last the staunch old Royalist issued a commission to Bacon as Commander of the Army. That was on Friday, the 23rd of May, and around Sunday noon, word arrived that Indians had murdered eight English in the center of the colony.

      Berkeley took this opportunity to demand of Bacon—who now felt totally in control—that he, and those other gentlemen who so desired, be freed to go to the protection of their families. The Rebel could hardly deny his own arguments.

      For about a month after the Assembly dissolved, Governor Berkeley did nothing to denounce or deny the legality of Bacon's commission, nor of the radical Acts passed by that legislature Bacon had controlled. The old man was exhausted and confounded. Some said he was depressed and forlorn: a young man who'd only been in Virginia for two years was ruling the colony.

      But Bacon hadn't been still. The Governor received a petition from the good people of Gloucester. Their arms and ammunition had been confiscated by the now Colonel Bacon, leaving the people vulnerable to Indian attack. They pointedly asked the Governor if Bacon's commission were good, and they begged for protection.

      The petition woke up the Governor, who now declared that Bacon was "like a thief who takes my purse then makes me say I gave it to him!" He immediately promised protection for Gloucester and went there, himself, to gather troops. He had no luck. The people were afraid to be used against Bacon instead of the Indians. The wilderness panic had spread. Even those who were against Bacon thought that he should be left alone, now that he was fighting Indians.

      Bacon got word of this attempt to raise an army against him, and turned his troops to march to Middle Plantation, nearer James Town. The Governor then fled to Accomack, the Eastern Shore. Bacon issued a Declaration of the People, claiming Berkeley had raised unjust taxes, that his justice was contemptible because of favorites, that Berkeley conspired to maintain a monopoly on beaver trade, and—worst of all—was pro-Indian. His Lordship was given four days to surrender. His accomplices were guilty, too, and their goods and property were to be confiscated. He signed the Declaration, "General, by the consent of the People."

      Sarah and Anne were horrified. Bacon had rejected the authority of the King's Governor, Sir William Berkeley,

      Days later, in early August, Bacon issued a Manifesto, declaring his intent to eliminate all Indians. He created a navy of confiscated ships and armed them with the ordinance from James Town Fort. Filled with power, he called a great convention at Captain Otho Thorpe's house at Middle Plantation. People went— with the threat of confiscation in the air—to sign Bacon's Oath. Those who signed or made their mark swore to aid Bacon against Berkeley; even agreeing to fight the King's troops, if necessary. Most finally agreed—even with the traitorous latter—conceding that it was "as well to be hung for stealing sheep, as goats."

      In mid-August the army headed northwest, looking for Indians. They went to the falls of the James, then back east to the upper Pamunkey River. Bacon was joined by Colonel Brent and, together, they entered the Great Dragon Swamp, looking for the enemy. The Pamunkey and their Queen Anne, widow of Totopotomoi, had fled to the swamp from the crazed white men. They were terrified and hiding in hunger for seven months. Bacon let his most tired and hungry soldiers leave, but then stumbled on the queen's encampment. The Indians tried to flee again, but eight were killed and forty-five were taken prisoner. The Pamunkey were friendly Indians; allies against the frontier raiders. Bacon's second great victory.

      While Bacon was in the Dragon Swamp, confiscating property and killing friends, the Governor turned the tables on Lower Norfolk's Captain Carver. The Captain had been sent to capture the Governor, but Carver, himself, was taken with his ship, and was hung as the traitor many said he was. Sir William sailed back to James Town, together with an army of three hundred men. He generously offered pardon to all rebels, even the officers—except Bacon and two others. The people of James Town ran. Many of Bacon's troops deserted. In return, Bacon promised freedom to servants and African slaves of the loyalists if they'd join him.

      The Governor built strong ramparts on the narrow isthmus through the marsh to the mainland. Bacon dug a ditch in front of the ramparts and paraded, there, the wives of loyalists and captured Indians to show proof of his success.

      But the Governor's rabble troops insisted on retreat. The men he'd gathered about him were interested in loot, not fighting. They got back on their boats and returned to the Chesapeake. Nathaniel Bacon's men entered James Town and burned it to the ground. But not before an act that forever sealed Anne's love and loyalty to the old Royalist. Berkeley freed many of the Loyalists whom he found in jail; among them was her father.

      Lower Norfolk was spared the massive bloodshed and loss of property that occurred in the path of Bacon's forces. Gloucester and Middlesex counties were centers of action for the bloodletting of Indians who hid in the Pamunkey Swamp, and for the loyalists who lived in those counties and were martyred, making these two the most honorable and heroic counties of the colony, in Anne's eyes.

      Grandfather Ware's plantation was confiscated by Bacon and turned over to an ally. Uncle John's plantation was taken, too, although the land brought to him through his wife's inheritance remained, Aunt Mary's nephew having been a friend of Bacon's back in London.

      Richard never mentioned going north to join the Rebels. In the first weeks of the open conflict he was anxious and openly bitter towards his wife, and he never discussed, the Rebellion with her. Sarah made sure Anne knew that he'd been in several fights at Sayer's Inn, and that her father had given Richard a severe tongue-lashing at the courthouse door in front of many people.

      Richard seethed with rage at his wife, his father-in-law, and with his many friends who sided with the Loyalists. He knew that Lower Norfolk was in no danger of Indian raids, and he was distressed at the calamity of Mister Ware and the losses to his uncle. And, despite the humiliation at the Courthouse, he was glad Father Biggs had been released. But he was here in boring safety, while Edward was on adventures with a leader they could recognize and follow as their own, a man of spirit and daring. A man who would stand up to the elderly saints who called
them
all a devilous, evil generation and spoke of them, at best, with condescension. Richard and Edward had often conceded, in their cups, that the saints were
right,
but they might express those ideas more chivalrously! And then they'd laugh uproariously.

      Richard's youth was past—he was now thirty-years old—and the responsibilities of a plantation whose useful land kept narrowing, the responsibilities to the wife he loved—despite the outrageous, unwomanly behavior she was picking up from the Quakeress, Sarah—and to the children he displayed with pride. The responsibilities seemed to be choking him at times, and he could only stop it with rum and games and an occasional wench. He'd grown up basking in the glory of his father's noble death. This Rebellion was his last chance to be the cavalier.

      In August, Captain Ingolbreitsen sailed his sloop, the
Margaret,
into and up Deep Creek. Richard boarded with a cask of peach brandy. His benefactor told him, as Richard poured a cup of the brandy, that Edward Harper had been killed.

      "A pistol ball entered his left leg and a sword went through his heart," Ingolbreitsen said. "Accidentally killed by some Marylanders. On the very land of your Aunt Mary, in Dragon Swamp."

      The Captain spit out his tobacco as he added, "Fighting the ferocious Pamunkey."

      Richard downed his drink and sat down on the cask. He remembered the young boy, Edward, standing by his father in the Harper's Bristol home. He saw Edward rolling down an old field hillside on the day they drank the dark brew with Opeechcot. It was near that place Edward died, and thoughts of the old savage's apparent curse returned. Richard saw his friend in mortal combat, then dying in glory and honor. Alone. Richard should have been with him.

      Captain Ingolbreitsen said he was a fool for having such thoughts. His young friend could afford to play adventurer. He had no family to leave suffering, though Richard's former master, Francis Harper, must now be in deep mourning for the loss of his entire first family.

      Two weeks later, another sloop arrived with the news that Colonel Nathaniel Bacon was dead! The bloody flux, it was, that killed him. His body had disappeared so that it wouldn't be displayed for public humiliation. A mere disease had brought the adventure to a close. In only weeks, the Rebellion totally collapsed.

      Anne had no arguments with the severe punishment Berkeley meted out to the traitors. He hanged more than twenty of them. But before he could restore confiscated lands to their rightful owners, Commissioners arrived from London to inquire into the Rebellion and its causes. Sir William Berkeley, the premier gentleman of Virginia, returned to England in expectation of an honorable, grateful reception from King Charles, but instead was left to wait in humiliating indifference as plotters laid the blame for the uprising at
his
feet. The King—as outrageous, in his way, as Bacon—was heard to refer to Governor Berkeley as an "old fool," and to have accused him of hanging more men after the Rebellion than were killed in it!

      The Loyalists were left bitter and, in many instances, destitute. Grandfather Ware was landless and Uncle John left only the acreage of his wife.

      Within six months the gallant old Governor, Sir William Berkeley, was dead. Well before the word arrived of that tragedy, though, Grandfather and Grandmother Ware were dead—within days of each other—from the same, dreadful flux that killed Bacon. Anne was the last of her line.

      She mourned her losses and tried to hide her growing bitterness. She ceased turning to her husband for solace.

      Richard had his losses, too. His oldest friend was dead. He was estranged, again, from his Uncle John. The gulf between him and his father-in-law had widened. The drought, this year, had killed his crop, and a tavern argument had killed his newly purchased servant, Fred. His isolation was relieved only in the presence of his adoring children. The only bright spot in the year of death for Anne and Richard was the birth of a daughter, whom Richard named Sarah Alice, in hopes of pleasing John Biggs.

      Increasingly, Richard turned to his oldest sons, John and Joseph. He still loved his wife, but after what he considered her betrayal of him during the Rebellion, coupled with the spurning of him by his uncle and his in-laws, he held firmly to the respect shown him by his boys.

      John was daring and aggressive. He reminded Richard of himself at that age. John was already keen on amassing his own fortune, and by the age of twelve was hunting wolves for the bounty on each head presented, and by continuing to set traps in the swamp for beaver, otter, and mink hides. He was useless with a hammer or a froe, so Richard let him contribute to the family coffers in the ways that suited him. Sometimes John was accompanied by his brother or by a servant boy, but that was usually at the insistence of his mother.

      Anne worried for the future of her children. The land was being rapidly depleted, and she feared that when their times came to inherit, the property would be valueless. She'd mentioned that to Richard and he'd agreed.

      He'd agreed, feeling her remark was meant to be an accusation against him, but that, somehow, she was right.

      As Richard hoed at the sandy soil, or planed an oak stave for a hogshead, or sat within a bush waiting for a deer, he'd think of how he'd fallen from the pinnacle he'd reached as a youngster of twenty-one.