Bacon with an increased army now rode out once more against the Indians. He made a rendezvous on the upper York--the old Pamunkey--and to this center he gathered horsemen until there may have been with him not far from a thousand mounted men. From here he sent detachments against the red men's villages in all the upper troubled country, and afar into the sunset woods where the pioneer's cabin had not yet been builded. He acted with vigor.
The Indians could not stand against his horsemen and concerted measures, and back they fell before the white men, westward again; or, if they stayed in the ever dwindling villages, they gave hostages and oaths of peace.
Quiet seemed to descend once more upon the border.
But, if the frontier seemed peaceful, Virginia behind the border was a bubbling cauldron. Bacon had now become a hero of the people, a Siegfried capable of slaying the dragon. Nor were Lawrence and Drummond idle, nor others of their way of thinking. The Indian troubles might soon be settled, but why not go further, marching against other troubles, more subtle and long-continuing, and threatening all the future?
In the midst of this speculation and promise of change, the Governor, feeling the storm, dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed Bacon and his adherents rebels and traitors, and made a desperate attempt to raise an army for use against the new-fangledness of the time. This last he could not do. Private interest led many planters to side with him, and there was a fair amount of passionate conviction matching his own, that his Majesty the King and the forces of law and order were being withstood, and without just cause. But the mass of the people cried out to his speeches, "Bacon!
Bacon!" As the popular leader had been warned from Jamestown by news of personal danger, so in his turn Berkeley seems to have believed that his own liberty was threatened. With suddenness he departed the place, boarded a sloop, and was "wafted over Chesapeake Bay thirty miles to Accomac.". The news of the Governor's flight, producing both alarm in one party and enthusiasm in the other, tended to precipitate the crisis. Though the Indian trouble might by now be called adjusted, Bacon, far up the York, did not disband his men. He turned and with them marched down country, not to Jamestown, but to a hamlet called Middle Plantation, where later was to grow the town of Williamsburg. Here he camped, and here took counsel with Lawrence and Drummond and others, and here addressed, with a curious, lofty eloquence, the throng that began to gather. Hence, too, he issued a "Declaration," recounting the misdeeds of those lately in power, protesting against the terms rebel and traitor as applied to himself and his followers, who are only in arms to protect his Majesty's demesne and subjects, and calling on those who are well disposed to reform to join him at Middle Plantation, there to consider the state of the country which had been brought into a bad way by "Sir William's doting and irregular actings."
Upon his proclamation many did come to Middle Plantation, great planters and small, men just freed from indentured service, holders of no land and little land and much land, men of all grades of weight and consideration and all degrees of revolutionary will, from Drummond-with a reported speech, "I am in overshoes; I will be in overboots!" and a wife Sarah who snapped a stick in two with the cry, "I care no more for the power of England than for this broken straw!"--to those who would be revolutionary as long as, and only when, it seemed safe to be so.
How much of revolution, despite that speech about his Majesty's demesne and subjects, was in Bacon's mind, or in Richard Lawrence's mind and William Drummond's mind, or in the mind of their staunchest supporters, may hardly now be resolved. Perhaps as much as was in the mind of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason a century later.
The Governor was in Accomac, breathing fire and slaughter, though as yet without brand or sword with which to put his ardent desires into execution.
But he and the constituted order were not without friends and supporters.
He had, as his opponents saw, a umber of "wicked and pernicious counsellors, aides and assistants against the commonalty in these our cruel commotions." Moreover--and a great moreover is that!--it was everywhere bruited that he had sent to England, to the King, "for two thousand Red Coates." Perhaps the King--perhaps England-will take his view, and, not consulting the good of Virginia, send the Red Coats! What then?
Bacon, as a measure of opposition, proposed "a test or ecognition," to be signed by those here at Middle Plantation who earnestly do wish the good of Virginia. It was a bold test! Not only should they covenant to give no aid to the whilom Governor against this new general and army, but if ships should bring the Red Coats they were to withstand them. There is little wonder that "this bugbear did marvellously startle" that body of Virginia horsemen, those progressive gentlemen planters, and others. Yet in the end, after violent contentions, the assembly at Middle Plantation drew up and signed a remarkable paper, the "Oath at Middle Plantation." Historically, it is linked on the one hand with that "thrusting out of his government" of Sir John Harvey in Charles I's time, and on the other with Virginian proceedings a hundred years later under the third George. If his Majesty had been, as it was rumored, wrongly informed that Virginia was in rebellion; if, acting upon that misinformation, he sent troops against his loyal Virginians-who were armed only against an evil Governor and intolerable woes then these same good loyalists would "oppose and suppress all forces whatsoever of that nature, until such time as the King be fully informed of the state of the case." What was to happen if the King, being informed, still supported Berkeley and sent other Red Coats was not taken into consideration.
