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For the past several months, I have been trying to fix as well as create articles about major figures in Bacon's Rebellion, without getting caught in this article's political morass, especially since my cyberbullies gear up in the spring. I expected some confusion between Councillor Nathaniel Bacon (Virginia politician) and his nephew the insurgent Nathaniel Bacon (Virginia colonist) (IMHO deservedly not receiving Good Article status in 2019). I did not expect that even the number of persons adjudicated as conspirators after the fact would differ significantly, much less that recent books (like this article) would start the rebellion so late. Wertenbacher's already-cited book (written by an eminent historian well before my birth) makes clear that British administrators in London had little idea of the social and economic stresses tobacco culture was causing in Virginia and the also-established Maryland colony. More indentured servants were surviving their indentures and wanted land to work and tobacco farming practices of the day also unsustainably drained cultivated land of needed nutrients, exacerbating conflicts with Native Americans. Plus prices for the exported product cratered nearly a decade before the conflict, and remained low due to British anti-Dutch policies. At the same time the restored Jacobite kings were giving land in the colonies (and the right to collect quitrents) to favorites, as well as attempting to raise taxes to pay for the last war.Jweaver28 (talk) 23:22, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Today I chatted with a couple of Virginia historians familiar with the documentary challenges of this era. Many documents were unearthed in British archives during the past century, including contradictory ones not included in the investigating commission's published report, plus contemporaries often prepared self-serving documents for superiors and a few later memoirs were written. IMHO, no definitive book has been written yet, and I was frustrated with Wertenbaker's and Rice's essays on sources instead of footnotes.
For what it's worth, archeologist and historian John Harold Sprinkle, Jr. wrote his doctoral thesis (William & Mary 1992) on this, which I began reviewing on microfiche but which may be downloadable at another library. He describes the historiographical back and forth (from Wertenbaker and a more recent author considering Bacon as a leader to Washburn and several others supporting Governor Berkeley), plus the race-based focus of Edmund Morgan and the class-based of Bernard Bailyn.
I was more interested in learning the names of those involved, and especially appreciated two of Sprinkle's tables, while noting their contradictions. Table2 on p. 70 lists the 26 Baconians whose estates were inventoried, of whom 17 had been executed (Richard Pomfrey's was in Maryland, 2 in unknown locations and 14 in 8 different counties). Table 1 on pp. 52-53 lists the fates of the Baconian leadership based on Hening's Statutes II pp. 370-386 and 544-556. Three Governor's Council members were ultimately pardoned (Thomas Beale, Thomas Bowler and Thomas Swann), and the table also lists 25 men executed. Many others (including Bacon and Chisman/Cheeseman) died, or fled from justice, or were fined and pardoned. About a dozen were ordered to appear in court, with no further updates about charges being dropped or findings of innocence, nor the "ordered to beg pardon from court" or "fled from justice" annotations. John Wisedom, and Jeremiah Hooke petitioned to be banished, and John Richens and John Taylor were banished from the colony. Bacon's successor, Joseph Ingram, was barred from officeholding, as were John Lawson, John Milner, William Tiballs, Gregory Walklett and Thomas Whaley. Perhaps continuing the contradiction, Table 11 )(p. 139) characterized the participation in the rebellion by Virginia's elite, with 4 of 10 Councillors listed as Baconians, 10 as Loyalists and 8 of uncertain status, whereas of Justices of the Peace and Burgesses, 15 supported Bacon, 44 were loyalists and the status of 78 is unknown.
For what it's worth, studies of Bacon's rebellion have been made by the Rutmans in Middlesex County, and by Sprinkle in York and Surry Counties. Three Surry rebels were executed for treason (Rookings, Scarborough and Whitson) and Arthur Allen and Robert Caufield sued others for damages to their property, with Caufield confiscating Richard Lawrence's estate worth 2100 pounds of tobacco and John Rutherford being assessed the largest penalty (4000 pounds of tobacco). Other interesting facts include Table 4 (pp. 85) which lists the holdings of slaves and servants of 24 leaders, noting that Hunt owned the most Blacks (8), but that Bacon, Carter, Chisman, Crews, Drummond and Rookings also owned Blacks, and Bacon and Crews enslaved Indians. Table 5 (p. 90) lists their relative finances, with Hall, Drummond and Hunt each worth nearly 10 times more than Bacon, and Carter and Wilford also seem worth more than the nominal leader, although the Economic Measure Index in Table 9(p. 99) has Bacon as the wealthiest and others worth approximately a tenth of the value of the wealthiest Virginians in the late 1700s.Jweaver28 (talk) 20:38, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The NPShistory.com webpage about Bacon's Rebellion compliments a book by Jane Carson as "fair and objective". It now seems a 1976 book funded by the Jamestown Foundation (but not yet cited herein) discusses both contemporary accounts and later historical and fictional books about the rebellion. However, when I clicked on the internet archive link a few minutes ago, the linked book was the 2 decades older Jamestown Foundation-funded book by Wertenbaker that I used in expanding this article a few months ago. I don't know if archive.org messed up the link, or it's another annoyance from my cyberbullies, who again called from a web-based robodialer shortly after I turned this laptop on at a different library this afternoon. (plus I got an obvious scammer email also immediately, as I had when I first logged on this morning and soon found myself unable to edit wikipedia even after re-logging into the site because of a new block). I'll try to look at (if not check out) the hard copy of Carson's book when I next visit the Library of Virginia.Jweaver28 (talk) 22:45, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
