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The History of the Americans

#196 Bacon’s Rebellion 4: The Burning of Jamestown

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9632 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Virginia Governor Sir William Berkeley has fled to the Eastern Shore with a small group of loyalist planters and a detachment of perhaps only fifty armed men. Nathaniel Bacon has occupied Berkeley’s estate near Jamestown, and dispatched men to capture loyalist ships anchored there. Bacon’s “navy” has out in search of Berkeley, but Berkeley turned the tables in an audacious amphibious attack and grabbed control of the Bay and the rivers. While Bacon was mucking around in the Dragon Swamp hunting notionally allied Pamunkeys, Berkeley recaptured Jamestown. Loyalist victory seemed at hand, but Bacon forced Berkeley to retreat from Jamestown a second time in part by grabbing the wives of loyalist planters and using them as human shields, and this time the rebels burn it to the ground.

At the end of the episode, it appears that the rebels had the upper hand. Little did they understand that the loyalist cause was far from lost, and the rebellion was, unbeknownst to anybody, on the brink of disaster.

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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

James D. Rice, Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America

Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia

Various authors, for the National Park Service, “Mapping the Dragon:
AN INDIGENOUS HISTORY OF BACON’S REBELLION”
 (pdf)

Charles McLean Andrews, Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675-1690

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 196.

0:11.6

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this episode on October 17, 2025, in Austin, Texas.

0:26.1

We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without intentional presentism.

0:29.8

As always, and perhaps obviously, your enjoyment and even basic comprehension of this episode will be improved if you've listened to the last four episodes, starting with notes on Virginia, 1644 to 1675, fairly recently.

0:50.5

It's early August, 1676, and we're still in Virginia.

0:56.6

Up in New England, Benjamin Church is now on point in the hunt for King Philip,

1:01.9

Metacombe, unfolding the unconventional tactics he had learned from his second at allies.

1:09.1

Philip would surround the Wampanoag-Sachim on August 11th,

1:13.4

and an Indian named alderman would kill him on August 12th,

1:17.9

all but ending the war south of Maine.

1:21.6

In Virginia, Bacon's rebellion was just getting to the harsh part.

1:27.3

Having extracted a commission from the Virginia Assembly at gunpoint,

1:32.4

Nathaniel Bacon had gathered his army at the fall line of the James River in mid-July

1:37.0

with the expressed intent of hunting down and killing Indians,

1:41.3

whether enemies or friends of the English.

1:45.2

Instead, having got wind that Sir William Barclay was trying to raise an army in loyalist Gloucester

1:51.5

County, Bacon turned his volunteers around and headed back in the direction of Jamestown.

1:59.1

Stopping at Middle Plantation, roughly Williamsburg,

2:02.9

Bacon had issued his declaration and manifesto at the end of July.

2:08.7

On August 8, he occupied the Green Spring Plantation,

2:13.2

the now abandoned home of Governor Barclay.

2:16.9

Barclay and his household had fled to the eastern shore of

...

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