n,
waxing angry, slew the envoys--an evil deed which their own color in
Maryland and in Virginia reprehended and repudiated. But the harm
was done. From the Potomac to the James Indians listened to Indian
eloquence, reciting the evils that from the first the white man had
brought. Then the red man, in increasing numbers, fell upon the outlying
settlements of the pioneers.

In Virginia there soon arose a popular clamor for effective action. Call
out the militia of every county! March against the Indians! Act! But the
Governor was old, of an ill temper now, and most suspicious of popular
gatherings for any purpose whatsoever. He temporized, delayed, refused
all appeals until the Assembly should meet.

Dislike of Berkeley and his ways and a growing sense of injury and
oppression began to quiver hard in the Virginian frame. The King was
no longer popular, nor Sir William Berkeley, nor were the most of the
Council, nor many of the burgesses of that Long Assembly. 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