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Illustrated Episode · Volume I, chapter 11 · 23 June 1676

Commission at gunpoint

An old man in a long coat pulls his shirt open before a young man flanked by men with long guns, outside a brick statehouse whose upper window is crowded with faces.
Jamestown, June 1676. Governor Berkeley, about seventy, tears open his shirt and dares Nathaniel Bacon's armed men to shoot. Bacon refuses. Minutes later his men aim cocked guns at the lawmakers in the upper window. The commission he came for is his. Rothbard calls Bacon no hero of liberty. Yet he judges the revolt a step toward liberty, even a small American Revolution. Chapter 11 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

On 23 June 1676 Nathaniel Bacon, twenty-nine years old, marched about five hundred armed volunteers into Jamestown while the Assembly was sitting and drew them up before the statehouse door. He wanted a commission to fight the Indians, and he meant to have it. Governor Sir William Berkeley, about seventy, came out to meet him, called him a rebel and a traitor to his face, offered to settle it with swords, and then tore open his shirt: "Here! Shoot me, foregod, fair Mark, Shoot." Bacon answered that he would not hurt a hair of his head. Minutes later his men leveled cocked guns at the Assembly window, crowded with the burgesses' faces, until one of them waved a handkerchief and called down, "You shall have it." The commission was drawn that night and delivered to Bacon the next morning. Rothbard has no use for Bacon as a hero; he calls him "scarcely a heroic and conscious torchbearer of liberty" (CiL, p. 96). Why it matters, in Rothbard's telling, is the rising behind him. Nearly everyone outside a privileged ruling caste had turned on the governor, and he judges that "a step forward to liberty, and even a microcosm of the American Revolution" (p. 95). A century before 1776, Virginians faced down a royal governor and won.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, single-volume ed. (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2011), vol. I, ch. 11, 'Bacon's Rebellion', pp. 93-103. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. T. M. [Thomas Mathew], 'The Beginning, Progress and Conclusion of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia in the Years 1675 and 1676' (dated 13 July 1705), in Charles M. Andrews, ed., Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675-1690 (New York: Scribner's, 1915), pp. 15-41. Eyewitness: Mathew sat for Stafford County in the June 1676 Assembly. Primary source
  3. Sir John Berry and Francis Moryson, 'A True Narrative of the Late Rebellion in Virginia, by the Royal Commissioners, 1677', in Andrews, ed., Narratives of the Insurrections (1915), pp. 105-141. Primary source
  4. Anonymous, 'The History of Bacon's and Ingram's Rebellion, 1676', in Andrews, ed., Narratives of the Insurrections (1915), text from p. 47. Primary source
  5. William Sherwood to Secretary Sir Joseph Williamson, James City, 28 June 1676, printed as 'Bacon's Rebellion: William Sherwood's Account', Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 1 (1893), pp. 170-174. Primary source
  6. Philip Ludwell, letter to an English official ('yo'r Honor'), written after 26 June 1676, printed as 'Bacon's Rebellion: Philip Ludwell's Account', Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 1 (1893), pp. 174-186 (editor's introduction pp. 174-178). Primary source
  7. Charles M. Andrews, editorial introductions and notes, Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675-1690 (1915): p. 29 n. 3 (the fusil), p. 56 n. 1 and p. 117 n. 1 (dates), pp. 11-14 (Mathew). Secondary source
  8. Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 (Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet 8; Williamsburg: Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation, 1957), pp. 27-28. Secondary source
  9. Warren M. Billings, 'Statehouses at Jamestown', Jamestown in the Atlantic World (Virtual Jamestown). Secondary source
  10. Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, 'The Statehouse', Historic Jamestowne, Map of Discoveries. Secondary source
  11. John L. Cotter and J. Paul Hudson, New Discoveries at Jamestown (Washington: National Park Service, 1957), sections 'Windows', 'Roofing Materials' and 'Muskets'. Secondary source
  12. Annie Lash Jester, Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet 17, 1957), pp. 9-10, 63. Secondary source
  13. Jane Dennison Carson, Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia: A Study in Colonial Policy (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1951), p. 1 n. 1, p. 28 and n. 2. Secondary source
  14. James D. Rice, 'Bacon's Rebellion (1676-1677)', Encyclopedia Virginia (Virginia Humanities, 2020; updated 2026-05-01). Secondary source
  15. Warren M. Billings and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, 'Sir William Berkeley (1605-1677)', Encyclopedia Virginia (2020; updated 2023-05-30). Secondary source
  16. Brent Tarter and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, 'Nathaniel Bacon (1647-1676)', Encyclopedia Virginia. Secondary source
  17. Janine Yorimoto Boldt, researcher, Colonial Virginia Portraits (Omohundro Institute, 2019), 'called Sir William Berkeley (1606-1677)': costume of the 1690s or later, identification 'highly questionable'. Secondary source