1. Tyson Gannon
AMERICAN COLONIES: CHESAPEAKE, CH. 7

2. COMMONWEALTHS
• In both Chesapeake colonies, the distant crown(for Virginia) or lord proprietor(for
Maryland) had to share power with the wealthiest and most ambitious colonists.
• In 1635 the Virginia assembly and council arrested and shipped homeward a
confrontational governor. By appointing a more cooperative replacement, the crown
accepted the claims of the planter elite to a share in colonial power.
• The wealthiest planters also dominated the county system of local government.
• The political culture assumed that the health and survival of the larger commonwealths of
county, colony, and realm all depended upon the order, morality, and allegiance
maintained in the many little commonwealths.

3. LABOR
• The Chesapeake demanded too much labor from too few colonists.
• The replication and expansion of profitable tobacco fields demanded more laborers who
could be driven to work under harsh conditions.
• Given the short life expectancy of all Chesapeake laborers, planters wisely preferred to
buy English indentured servants for four or five years rather than purchase the more
expensive life-long slaves from Africa.
• If it was in the planter’s interest to keep his human chattel alive, it was also in his interest
to extract as much work as possible before terms expired.
• Instead of punishing abusive masters, the courts disciplined defiant servants by extending
their indenture time.

4. PROSPERITY
• Health improved as many new plantations expanded upstream into locales with fresh
running streams, away from the stagnant lowlands, which favored malaria, dysentery, and
typhoid fever.
• Over time, a growing proportion of the population became “seasoned” by surviving bouts
with the local diseases. The “seasoned” acquired a higher level of immunity, which they
passed on to their offspring.
• At mid-century, freed servants more easily obtained farms because the 1646 victory over
the Indians provided fertile land conveniently located beside navigable streams and
rivers.
• The frontier conditions enabled labor to create new income and assets at a prodigious
rate for a preindustrial economy.

5. REBELLION
• Hard times came to Virginia after 1665 as common planters became squeezed between their
declining incomes and their heavy taxes paid to an especially callous and exploitative colonial
government.
• Governor Berkeley cultivated a following among the wealthiest and most ambitious planters. His
favorites monopolized the major and lucrative public offices, and they received a
disproportionate share in the grants of frontier land and of licenses to trade with Indians for
deerskins.
• The pay lavished on the elite came from taxes heaped upon the common planter, who paid on
average 150 pounds of tobacco, or about a tenth of his annual crop.
• The disgruntled Virginians found a leader in Nathaniel Bacon.
• In Sept. 1676, Bacon’s men drove the governor and his supporters out of Jamestown and
across Chesapeake Bay to refuge on the eastern shore.
• Bacon suddenly died of dysentery a month later. Leaving his movement leaderless and divided.
• In December and January the rebellion collapsed. The vindictive governor hanged twenty-three
rebel leaders and unleashed his men to plunder Bacon’s supporters.