It is often said by historians that Bacon's Rebellion was a dispute over Virginia's Indian policy. The Rebellion was led by Nathaniel Bacon. According to an excerpt in Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of The United States, "White frontiersmen started the uprising because they were angry about the way the colony was being run." Using Document #4 as a reference, they also agree with Zinn stating that the White frontiersmen Began the uprising. Document #4 says,"In September 1675, Col. Mason and a thousand Virginians trapped the Susquehannocks in an Indian fortress across the Potomac river in Maryland and laid siege to it." These two quotes refer to the Virginians creating the beginning of the mess.
On the contrary, other historians believe that the Natives created the uprising. Document #1 states, after describing the other causes, "Fourthly, the disturbance given by the Indians...." This means that they think the Natives started the Rebellion. Not only do historians believe that the Natives began the uprising, but they think that Bacon began the Rebellion due to his anger towards the Indians, and wanted war. Group 8's edit of the Wikipedia page says in the third paragraph that Bacon wanted to attack the Indians, but Governor Berkeley refused him.
Other Documents such as the first handout of the Declaration infers that because Nathaniel Bacon disliked the Indians, his "private battle" started the dispute between the Virginians and the Indians. The main cause of the uprising was the event when Sir William Berkeley refused to approve Bacon's request of starting an attack against the Native Americans. Berkeley's intentions were to hold peace with the Natives, as written in many different pieces of literature. The text book notes that Governor Berkeley wanted to minimize the contact between settlers and the Natives, in regards of keeping peace.
Bacon was elected into the House of Burgesses, and was then arrested by Berkeley for attempting to take his seat at the assembly. Once Bacon was released, he formed his own militia and persuaded Berkeley into granting his commission. He gave in, and then Bacon led his men into war with the Natives. The Governor, Berkeley, proclaimed Bacon and his men as traitors and rebels. Bacon gained the capital, but feared that he could not withstand Berkeley's attack. To solve his problem, Bacon pushed Governor Berkeley out of Jamestown by setting the town on fire. When Bacon suddenly died, Berkeley regained control of the rebels and killed off all of Bacon's allies. As a result, tensions between the colonists and natives went down, and Bacon's Rebellion changed the history of Jamestown.
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When revising and adding to the blog, I took the comments that I recieved into consideration.
I focused more on adding quotes from many different refrences, due to the fact that most of my comments noted that I needed more qoutes. On my original post I wrote a summary of Bacon's Rebellion and added one quote. After recieving comments, I learned that my summary was good I just needed to add qoutes to justify the different views historians had. I also broke up my one paragraph into four paragraphs and added what i thought they needed to create more of a "they say", instead of "this is Bacon's Rebellion."
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