Bacon’s Rebellion
According to the Totally History website1, the origins of the Bacon’s Rebellion were in 1674, when Virginian settlers tried to remove the local Native American Indians, who the settlers claimed disrupted the productivity of their farming operations and disturbed the peace. According to a Bacon’s Rebellion article2 by Susan McCully (1987, revised 1995) on the National Park Service website, the events occurred in a climate of local serious economic problems, including the falling price of tobacco, commercial competition from the colonies of the Carolinas and Maryland, rising costs of imported English goods and fewer opportunities to sell to England. The principal agitator for action and self-appointed leader of the settlers was Nathaniel Bacon3, a farmer, originally from Suffolk, England. This led to the rebellion which should never had happened and maybe would not have, if Governor William Berkeley4 had been more supportive, particularly with for action against the Indians and if perceived misdemeanors by Indians and settlers had been resolved properly instead of actions by hotheads on both sides.
The Spartacus website relates that William Berkeley was born in Somerset, England and served two terms as Governor of Virginia. According to the Totally History account, Nathaniel Bacon (Berkeley’s relative by marriage) was furious when Berkeley legislated to allow the Indians to stay, and turned against Bacon – the man he had formerly supported. The Bacon’s Rebellion took place in 1676, but collapsed after Bacon succumbed to dysentery that same year.
Meanwhile, skirmishes between different Indian groups and settlers had escalated, triggered initially (according to Totally History) when some Doeg Indians were killed by settlers, after stealing some pigs from a settler who had not paid them for goods they had traded.
In conclusion, it seems that the ill-fated rebellion arose out of aspirations by the settlers to rid the area of the native Indians and to annex their lands. Had the skirmishes between settlers and Indians been resolved in a peaceful manner and had Governor Berkeley heeded Bacon’s pleas for government support and sought a compromise solution that satisfied the aspirations of the settlers, then maybe the rebellion would never have occurred and the deaths of those killed in the hostilities would have been avoided.
George Washington’s Whiskey Rebellion Proclamation
On 7th August 1794, President George Washington issued a proclamation5 in response to attacks that had been made on Excise Agents by farmers in western Pennsylvania. Those attacks were in protest at the excise tax imposed in 1791 on the producers of whiskey. The farmers claimed – according to an article on the Archiving Early America6 website – that the tax made it impossible for them to make any profit. A Public Information article by Michael Hoover7 about the Whiskey Rebellion explains that the tax imposed by Congress helped pay off the national debt arising from the government’s assumption of the Revolutionary War debts. Washington’s proclamation was perhaps an inevitable act to end the protests, in which he announced a calling out of the military to quell the rioting, which he condemned as interference with the “operation of the laws of the United States for raising revenue upon spirits distilled within the same.”
Hoover’s article relates that the tax was opposed predominantly by the western farmers. Whereas their eastern counterparts could easily transport their grain to market, they had to cope with long journeys over mountainous, dirt roads, hence distilled their grain into whiskey that was easier to transport and sell, and even to use as “currency” in trading for goods and/or services.
The rebellion escalated with increasing scales of violence until, as Hoover reports, the President issued his proclamation, invoking the 1792 Militia Act. After attempts to first negotiate with leaders of the rebels, he summoned militia numbering some 13,000 men who entered the rebel areas and arrested the rebel leaders, for what the President in his proclamation had called “acts, which I am advised amount to treason, being overt acts of levying war against the United States”.
Following the arrests of the rebel leaders and others totaling around 130 people, Hoover recounts that the President eventually pardoned them all, and that organized opposition to the tax petered out. However, the rebellion showed that the country was not yet fully united and had illustrated that sections of the population were prepared to fight against inequity.
In conclusion, I think that the rebellion was caused directly by the imposition of the whiskey tax, which led to the unrest and violent protest by the western farmers who saw the tax as a direct attack on their livelihoods. In hindsight, perhaps the legislation was ill-considered and led inevitably to George Washington’s proclamation in an attempt to quell the fires of discontent.
William Lloyd Garrison
Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1805, Garrison – according to a biographical feature on the Ohio History Central8 website – enjoyed only a limited education, but learned more by working for different newspapers. He became a dedicated abolitionist, and eventually – in 1831 – started his own newspaper, The Liberator, which he used to educate readers about slavery and the cruelty of it. He published that newspaper until 1865 when the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery in the United States. Garrison was undoubtedly a major influence in the eventual abolition of slavery in the United States.
As reported in another biographical article on the Public Broadcasting Service9 (PBS) website, Garrison had earlier supported the American Colonization Society, which purported to have an aim to help free blacks emigrate to coastal west Africa. However, he became disenchanted with that organization when he found that their main aim was to reduce the numbers of free blacks in the US and to preserve slavery as an institution.
So, in 1832, the PBS article reports that Garrison helped organize the New England Anti-Slavery Society and in 1833 the American Anti-Slavery Society. Both these organizations were leaders in campaigning for immediate emancipation of all slaves.
Garrison was also a defender of women’s rights. In October 1853, he published in the Liberator a number of resolutions relating to and promoting women’s rights. These resolutions are reproduced on the Fair Use Repository website10.
A biography of Garrison on the Notable Names Database (NNDB)11 website describes Garrison as “a man of peace”. However, he warned his countrymen that “Slavery must be overthrown, if not by peaceful means, then in blood.”
I consider that Garrison’s tireless and passionate efforts to encourage and promote emancipation of America’s slaves over much of his life, was undoubtedly important in bringing about the eventual total abolition of slavery in America.
The Vicksburg Campaign
The Vicksburg Campaign of 1863 was – as stated on the American Civil War12 website – key to General Grant’s plans to regain control over the River Mississippi, by defeating the Confederate forces that were under siege there. Maintaining the siege rather than direct attack on the defenses was determined to be the best strategy for the Union’s forces.
The same article suggests that the tactics of maintaining the siege rather than direct assault was determined after an abortive attack on the city on May 22 1863, in which Grant’s forces suffered over 3,000 casualties while the defending troops under Lt. General Pemberton lost only 500 men.
Because the city was in a naturally easily defended location, surrounded by high bluffs and/or river and swamp, direct attack was difficult, and the defending forces were able to repel direct assaults from below. Hence Grant cut off all supply lines into Vicksburg whilst maintaining a constant artillery barrage, which resulted in numbers of the Vicksburg citizens tunneling into hillside caves, since the surrounding Union forces prevented escape.
An article on the History.com13 website reports that the 29,000 men defending the city were put under siege by the Unionists having dug some 15 miles of trenches. The article recounts that “it was only a matter of time” before General Grant’s army of 70,000 men were victorious.
The siege ended on July 4th when Pemberton was forced to surrender after his men had endured disease and starvation, ending the Confederate era there. Grant paroled most of the Confederate troops – an act he may have later regretted as many of them later opposed his forces at the Battle of Chattanooga in that same year.
The siege tactics employed by General Grant certainly paid off, allowing him to accept the surrender of the defending Confederate forces after a six-week siege, with few if any casualties after the initial abortive assault. Had he repeated his earlier attempt at direct assault on the city, it is likely that he would have suffered many more casualties and perhaps even lost the battle for the city.
