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Alex and I return with another poem from the poet laureat of colonial Maryland, Ebenezer Cook, this time his narrative of Bacon's Rebellion(pdf).

How memory-holed is Bacon's Rebellion? The false promise of promotional literature and the headright system. Economic anxiety and indian hating. Trade disputes, theft, jurisdiction, and the start of the rebellion. Bacon seeing no difference between friend and enemy indians. The spectre of Cromwell. George Washington's great grandfather: war criminal. Nathaniel Bacon, failson, scammer, world-traveler. Defense spending boondoggles and paying your taxes in tobacco. Selling guns to indians. Bacon's alliance/battle with Posseclay and the Occaneechees. Who's side is Cook on? Bacon uses loyalist women as a human shield, is more "Blue Lives Matter" than DSA. Bacon's bloody flux and his surviving rebellion. The merchant, Captain Grantham's, dirty trick.

@Alecks_Guns, @MattLech

@LitHangover

References:

Rice, James D. 2012. Tales from a revolution: Bacon's Rebellion and the transformation of early America. New York City: Oxford University Press.

Schmidt, Ethan A. 2016. The divided dominion: social conflict and Indian hatred in early Virginia.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. 1972. The Governor and the rebel; a history of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia. New York: Norton.