They Say 2: Bacon's Rebellion

According to Dictionary.com, rebellion is," Open, organized, and armed resistance to one's government or ruler." Though short lived, Bacon's Rebellion was esteemed and criticized by scientists and researchers as a very cruel and inhumane point in American History. Casting a sort of shadow of injustice over the event, Puglisi states in his article "'Whether They Be Friends Or Foes:' The Roles And Reactions Of Tributary Native Groups Caught In Colonial Conflicts" that the colonists had "a record with a lack of regard for the integrity and the well-being of the tributary tribes[...]" (83). Though Puglisi makes many very logical points, there is another popular point of view that indicates the massacre by the colonists and Bacon's hatred of them was justified by their need to defend themselves, which coincidentally makes Bacon look like a "True American Hero". This view is highly recommended by the book for young adults titled "A Young People's History of the United States Volume One" by Howard Zinn and Rebecca Stefoff. Throughout the texts, Zinn and Stefoff make multiple statements averting to the thought of a small militia of goodhearted farmers and middle-classmen trying to overthrow a corrupt government. An example of these aversions is the statement "Bacon's Rebellion brought together groups from the lower class... because they were angry with the way the colony was being run."

A polar opposite opinion of that of Zinn and Stefoff's is the idea that Bacon was an all-out traitor to "King and Country". Though Puglisi has a similar ideal, Robert Beverly takes it to an almost extremist level in his excerpt from "The History and Present State of Virginia". In this excerpt, Beverly persuades that Bacon's real reason for the rebellion was "endeavored to ruin a Governor, whom they all entirely loved and had unanimously chosen;[...]" (Document #1). Later in the excerpt Beverly states the four things that he believes were the reason for the uprising, equally trying to balance the document by persuading that Bacon was not just an anarchist or terrorist, but a person who actually thought he was acting for the good of the people, making him even more dangerous. In these reasons it is apparent that Beverly is trying to keep the blame away from the government by trying to belittle the tax and lack of land problems the colonists were going through.

Again, on the opposite side of this point is the view that the Indians had to be taken out for the good of the colonists, which is clearly demonstrated in "The History of Bacon's and Ingram's Rebellion". Though the author is unknown, it is easy to tell that the writer was clearly a first-hand witness of "these brutish and inhumane brutes" (Document #5). Here, the thought-to-be colonist exclaims "they de-vised a hundred ways to torter and torment those poore soules [colonists] with, whose reched fate it was to fall in to there unmercyfull hands" (document #5), clearly showing a deep hatred or racism towards the indians who, according to Puglisi, were just "on one side of the impassable chasm and 'us' on the other" (76). What Puglisi means by this is that there were just no ways to make terms of peace with the indians: at least that the colonists could see. He clearly exclaims later in the same paragraph that there was a "bridge" across that "impassable chasm". The excerpt from "The History of Bacon's and Ingram's Rebellion" also leaves the reader rather skeptic of his facts, because in the document the author states that 60 colonist were killed in January 1676, while the investigation by the Royal Commissioners' "A True Narrative of the Late Rebellion in Virginia" clearly reports only a mere 36 dead colonists, making one of the writers a liar.