Portfolio: Essay 1

Vicky Lay

Essay #1

Bacon’s Rebellion - Class

What catch my attention the most and quickest are those events that changed the history or happened with interesting reasons. Just like what happened in the World War II, Japan attacked the Pearl Harbor which belong to United State of America, just because they thought the U.S. government would help their enemies to fight them, so Japan decided bomb Pearl Harbor, where American Navy located. Later on, America dropped a nuclear bomb in Japan and killed a big number of Japan’s population. After all Japan learned a lesson from U.S., and it changed history and ended the World War II. Isn’t it an interesting event happened in history for Japanese made a funny mistake. And just like what surprised me most in Bacon’s Rebellion which happened in1676, that Nathaniel Bacon was a rich class gentleman from England. He helped and led those poor American colonists to fight the English government and the American Indians. And also the differences of life between each class during the year of 1676 got me interested.

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Bacon’s Rebellion erupted all over Virginia’s Indian policy in 1676. The policy was a treaty that the colonial government signed with American Indians that the colonists or the government will not cross or take over the rest of Indian’s territory. And as the end for the result, we know that Europeans still took over the land just because more and more Europeans immigrated to America and they needed more space to live.

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It was a huge different life between each society class. It was either very rich and powerful or very poor and did not own anything at all. As more and more Europeans came to America, what happened to those poor people who could not pay for their trips to America? For those poor people who could not their trips to America, they signed a seven- year contract with rich people like merchants to pay for the trip to America. In order to pay back, they had to serve the merchant for seven years, but if they tried to run away during the serving years the merchant had the right to add more years on the contract. And it very similar to the lowest class which were the African slaves. The African slaves had no right and no voice during this time. The main two reasons why Africans were enslaved was because to the English religion, the color black represented evil, and also was an excuse that they needed somebody to do the works that they did not want to do by themselves. And even though the poor English were owned by somebody, they still got their freedom after serving years, and slaves did not. There were only a few examples that slaves could by themselves out of their owners. Most of African slaves worked for their owner all their lives and their children were treated and worked as slaves too. Slaves were very useful and cheap to the rich people at this time, since more Africans were kidnapped and sent to America and sold as slaves. In the text book, “THE AMERICAN PROMISE” written by historians Roark, Johnson, Cohen, Stage, Lawson and Hartmann, Africans were brought to America by ships. Europeans sent and sold around 1,341,000 Africans in sixteenth century. The master did not care anything about his slaves, all he did was to make them work and work and if they got sick or died, he would just go buy more slaves to work for him. The master just wanted to make profits from the products that slaves made. And the products were mostly tobacco since it was the biggest plantation and European were crazy about it.

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The high classes during this time were those governors, rich family, and those plantation owners. The reason why rich people were powerful was because they were friends with governments. And government was friends with rich people because they can support the government with money. For this reason, more and more unfairness events started to disrupted in the society in Virginia. I am strongly disagreed the way that the slaves were mistreated. How could people treated a human begin like an animal and did not care for his death.

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How did the houses look different in each different class ?There’s a travel report written by Sara McClure, a student of the College of William and Mary. And it’s about when servants and lower class people came to visit a higher class they would have to stay in the main hall. This did create a feeling of intimidation and separated the upper class from the lower classes. And the fact that wealthy people were able to put so much money and effort into their house brings to light an important difference in priorities between the classes. Most of small or poor planters would put all their money back into their tobacco crops while people who were wealthier could afford to use money for their homes.

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Virginia’s Indian policy might have worked if the Chesapeake population did not grow so fast. But since the number of new colonists and poor and freed servants increased, they were land-hungry. They did not have that much money to buy lands and also there were not enough lands for them to have when there is a treaty between Native Americans and Europeans. These were the two main reasons that Bacon led his men to against Virginia government and Native Americans.

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An article named “ Bacon’s Rebellion” posted in the website of National Center for History in the Schools of University of California, that Nathaniel Bacon was the son of a wealthy English gentleman. Bacon was sent to America to plant a large tobacco field. At first he was welcomed by the Governor of Virginia, but not till Bacon started a rebellion against government and Native Americans. Bacon was really a good leader that stood up for those poor freemen. He knew that it was wrong that government and rich people charged a heavy taxes on lower classes. No wonder those people in lower classes could not get rich and for those poor freemen was almost barely to making a living. When Bacon started the rebellion, more people became his supporters. Nathaniel Bacon became a hero to many of the poor freeman. The Governor at this time was a man named William Berkeley. Bacon had declared war against Berkeley and others that are on government‘s side. And then Berkeley called Bacon as a traitor.

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“We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism,”by Huey P. Newton. And “Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing,” by Thomas Paine. I like the ideas of both quotes. To get a peaceful society with equality of rights, we must fight for it if it needs. The word FREEDOM meant a lot to the most of people in the past and still in the modern world. And I am glad that Nathaniel Bacon stood up and helped poor colonists to spread their voices.

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During the rebellion, Bacon led the colonists to fight American Indians to get more lands and was because those American Indian had a surprised attack which killed a lot colonists. Also Bacon led his followers against to the Governor Berkley and sacked the grandees’ plantations, and attacked Jamestown. And the loyalists on Berkley’s side retaliated by plundering the homes of Bacon’s followers.

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As the end of the rebellion, bacon and his supporters actually won, the governor reduced the taxes by 75 percent between 1660 and 1700 and there were more lands for colonists . And because of the taxes reduced, it minimized the differences between rich planters and poor farmers.