Learn how Bacon’s Rebellion became a turning point for the way the laws of colonial Virginia distinguished people of different races. Show
Last Updated: August 11, 2017
The second episode in the three-part series Race: The Power of an Illusion questions the belief that race has always been with us. The second episode in the three-part series Race: The Power of an Illusion questions the belief that race has always been with us. In Virginia in the 1600s, Anthony Johnson secured his freedom from indentured servitude, acquired land, and became a respected member of his community. Elizabeth Key successfully appealed to the colony’s legal system to set her free after she had been wrongfully enslaved. By the 1700s, the laws and customs of Virginia had begun to distinguish black people from white people, making it impossible for most Virginians of African descent to do what Johnson and Key had done. Why did Virginia lawmakers make these changes? Many historians point to an event known as Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 as a turning point. Nathaniel Bacon was a wealthy white property owner and relative of Virginia’s governor, William Berkeley. But Bacon and Berkeley did not like each other, and they disagreed over issues pertaining to how the colony should be governed, including the colony’s policy toward Native Americans. Bacon wanted the colony to retaliate for raids by Native Americans on frontier settlements and to remove all Native Americans from the colony so landowners like himself could expand their property. Berkeley feared that doing so would unite all of the nearby tribes in a costly and destructive war against the colony. In defiance of the governor, Bacon organized his own militia, consisting of white and black indentured servants and enslaved black people, who joined in exchange for freedom, and attacked nearby tribes. A power struggle ensued with Bacon and his militia on one side and Berkeley, the Virginia House of Burgesses, and the rest of the colony’s elite on the other. Months of conflict followed, including armed skirmishes between militias. In September 1676, Bacon’s militia captured Jamestown and burned it to the ground. Although Bacon died of fever a month later and the rebellion fell apart, Virginia’s wealthy planters were shaken by the fact that a rebel militia that united white and black servants and slaves had destroyed the colonial capital. Legal scholar Michelle Alexander writes:
After Bacon’s Rebellion, Virginia’s lawmakers began to make legal distinctions between “white” and “black” inhabitants. By permanently enslaving Virginians of African descent and giving poor white indentured servants and farmers some new rights and status, they hoped to separate the two groups and make it less likely that they would unite again in rebellion. Historian Ira Berlin explains:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first appearance in print of the adjective white in reference to “a white man, a person of a race distinguished by a light complexion” was in 1671. Colonial charters and other official documents written in the 1600s and early 1700s rarely refer to European colonists as white. As the status of people of African descent in the British colonies was challenged and attacked, and as white indentured servants were given new rights and status, the word white continued to be more widely used in public documents and private papers to describe the European colonists. People of European descent were considered white, and those of African descent were labeled black. Historian Robin D. G. Kelley explains:
The division in American society between black and white that began in the late 1600s had devastating consequences for African Americans as slavery became an institution that flourished for centuries. Lawyer and civil rights activist Bryan Stevenson explains:
Leaders and scientists from the United States and around the world would increasingly rely on the supposed differences between the black and white races to justify the brutal and inhuman treatment of slaves. Connection Questions
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The resources I’m getting from my colleagues through Facing History have been just invaluable. — Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif What was the underlying cause of the expansion of African slavery in English North America?What was the underlying cause of the expansion of African slavery in English North America? Colonists did not want to give land to indentured servants, less Englishmen were willing to become servants, and colonists were afriad of a rebellion from them. These factors turned colonists onto African slavery.
How did chattel slavery differ from indentured servitude How did the former system come to replace the latter what were the results of this shift?Indentured servitude differed from chattel slavery because indentured servants are people who were willing to work to get transportation, land, clothes, food, or shelter instead of money. In chattel slavery, people are considered property instead of workers or servants.
What is true of indentured servants?Indentured servants were not paid wages but they were generally housed, clothed, and fed. The rights to the individual's labor could be bought and sold, but the servants themselves were not considered property and were free upon the end of their indenture (usually a period of five to seven years).
What is one way plantation slavery in the Americas differ from slavery in previous eras of human history quizlet?What is one way plantation slavery in the Americas differed from slavery in previous eras of human history? Labor on plantations was much more demanding, and the death rate of enslaved people in the Americas was much higher than in the household slavery common in Africa.
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