There arose a loud demand
for a new election and for changes in public policy.
Where a part of Richmond now stands, there stretched at that time a tract
of fields and hills and a clear winding creek, held by a young planter
named Nathaniel Bacon, an Englishman of that family which produced "the
wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind." The planter himself lived farther
down the river. But he had at this place an overseer and some indentured
laborers. This Nathaniel Bacon was a newcomer in Virginia -- young man who
had been entered in Gray's Inn, who had traveled, who was rumored to have
run through much of his own estate. He had a cousin, also named Nathaniel
Bacon, who had come fifteen years earlier to Virginia "a very rich, politic
man and childless," and whose representations had perhaps drawn the younger
Bacon to Virginia. At any rate he was here, and at the age of twenty-eight
the owner of much land and the possessor of a seat in the Council. But,
though he sat in the Council, he was hardly of the mind of the Governor and
those who supported him.
It was in the spring of 1676 that there began a series of Indian attacks
directed against the plantations and the outlying cabins of the region
above the Falls of the Far West. Among the victims were men of Bacon's
plantation, for his overseer and several of his servants were slain. The
news of this massacre of his men set their young master afire. Even a less
hideous tale might have done it, for he was of a bold and ardent nature.
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