Decide by yourself Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 2

Decide by yourself - Essay Example It is difficult to pin point an exact time of disappearances of specific individuals after the Bacon Rebellion. What is so mysterious, however, is that the disappearances of numerous freed slave families simply no longer existed on record after the time of the Bacon Rebellion. The Rebellion itself occurred in 1676, but progressively after the rebellion, the disappearances began. A brief history of the Bacon Rebellion will tell us that a few key factors implicated in igniting it involved a decline in tobacco quality due to massive over production and lowered prices, scarce land availability, raised taxes, and an overall low popularity of the government at the time, particularly Governor Berkley. Other factors which played more critically in the events that spurned the rebellion were poor relations with Native Americans. In fact, there was a great deal of unrest between several tribes and the colonists. In some of the raids perpetrated on Native American tribes, it was a case of mistaken identity that made a bad situation worse. Initially, it was the Doeg tribe which instigated the raid. The Susquehanna tribe, however, was victim to the retaliation raid by the colonists. In reality, it was these raids back and forth between Native Americans and colonists that started the Bacon Rebellion. Nathaniel Bacon, a highly popular colonist, began and led the Bacon Rebellion. At the time, Sir William Berkley served as governor of the colony. He would not consent to sending troops to help the colonists in their retaliation against the Native Americans whom the colonists felt posed a threat. Eventually, Bacon and his followers essentially overthrew Berkley. In the end, however, it was Berkley who won with the help of British royal naval ships. It is important to mention that many freed slaves were actually in support of the rebellion as well as part of it. It was the working class colonists and freed slaves against the