The Bacon Strategy
A Strategy to Assemble a Winning Political Coalition Against Tyranny in America
Word Count: 2,146
Reading Time: ~10 Minutes
An extremely relevant and important chapter of American history that has been sorely ignored in recent decades is what is commonly called Bacon's Rebellion, described in this way on the Historic Jamestowne section of the NPS government website:
"For many years, historians considered the Virginia Rebellion of 1676 to be the first stirring of revolutionary sentiment in America, which culminated in the American Revolution almost exactly one hundred years later."
The Virginia House of Delegates in 1916 mounted a plaque in the chamber honoring Nathaniel Bacon as, according to EncyclopediaVirginia.org, “A great Patriot Leader of the Virginia People who died while defending their rights October 26, 1676”, which appears to remain to this day according to Virginia's Assembly's government website:
"Desks for the Delegates fill the room, surrounding the Speaker's and Clerk's podiums. On the wall behind the podiums is a bronze and marble tablet honoring Nathaniel Bacon."
Thomas Jefferson was gifted an account of Bacon's Rebellion and was so enamored with it that he personally handwrote a copy of the manuscript and a preface, then sent in such manuscript and preface in order to be published for public consumption. This document was published in the Richmond Enquirer in 1804, and can be found at the Library of Congress.
In the introduction, Mr. Jefferson writes that Bacon's Rebellion is "improperly called" so, and that, "If this little book speaks the truth, Nathaniel Bacon will no longer be regarded as a rebel, but as a patriot. His name will be rescued from the infamy which has adhered to it for more than a century; the stigma of corruption, cruelty, and treachery, will be fixed on the administration by which he was condemned; and one more case will be added to those which prove, that insurrections proceed oftener from the misconduct of those in power, than from the factious and turbulent temper of the People."
Thomas Jefferson speaks this positively about Bacon and his actions, and Bacon's insurrection, called here on out, Bacon's Defense, was much more severe than the stirrings of the sleeping giant that were seen in the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021. In the climax of the defense, Bacon and his men burned down the whole Virginia capital of Jamestown.
In this article I want to highlight a specific aspect of Bacon's Defense that will be necessary for Americans to have an understanding of in order to form a successful coalition against tyranny, particularly in the context of American politics.
In Bacon's time, the Virginia elite were very wealthy, connected (to each other), and corrupt. Government power was used to help the rich, and the poor were left to fend for themselves against the aggressive Amerindians, who the Virginia elite were trading with, while ignoring the depredations against their own people. This should be sounding familiar to the American reader.
The poor at the time were often the ones facing the most hardship from the Amerindians because they tended to be on the frontier, and so many were attracted to Bacon's appeal to the people which stood in opposition to the elites who were not maintaining their rights. As a result, Bacon, despite being quite wealthy himself, drew support from the poor, and most importantly for this article, he drew support from all kinds of demographics: poor whites, indentured whites, free blacks, indentured blacks, enslaved blacks, etc.
Later, in the 1830's, the Bacon strategy was employed again when Texians (Anglo Texans) and Tejanos (Hispanic Texans) worked together to fight for independence from Mexico, which in turn led to the Mexican-American War, and eventually the accession of the State of Texas into the United States.
In the 1860's, the Bacon strategy between whites and blacks was employed only half-heartedly, and Jefferson Davis, very notably, attributed the fall of the Confederacy to the failure to wholeheartedly implement it. I wrote a whole article on that issue specifically, which can be read here:
The point that I am making, and which is demonstrated repeatedly by American history, is that in order to successfully overthrow American tyranny, whites must be willing to work together with other ethnic groups and races within America, and this can be done all while maintaining American identity; without compromising white interest.
How would this strategy be implemented in our time? What would this look like?
On blacks:
When the slaves were supposedly freed by Lincoln's war, blacks died en masse: of starvation, exposure, illness, because they were turned out like cattle and abandoned to provide for themselves in the war-torn South with no experience doing so. Their whole lives they had been provided with free healthcare and a living wage through Antebellum slavery and that was abruptly ended. An interview with former slave Fountain Hughes can be listened to/read here at the Library of Congress, in which Mr. Hughes describes being "turned out like a lot of cattle" when "freedom" came:
"Why then we'd just go and stay anywheres we could. Lay out a night in underwear. We had no home, you know. We was just turned out like a lot of cattle. You know how they turn cattle out in a pasture? Well after freedom, you know, colored people didn't have nothing."
There were many in the North and South that thought that black people in America would all die out because of how bad things were at the time, and that very well may have been the case if Reconstruction had not been cut short. The Jim Crow era came about through a compromise between the North and South that allowed the South a time to be rebuild and adapt to the new economic realities. In the 1950's, black people largely had intact families, stable employment, and relatively low crime, but that all changed after the social upheavals of the 60s. Very quickly, crime flew out of control and by the 70s, the solution that the white liberals found was to just throw black people in prison, where they could be put back into slavery, just as the thirteenth amendment allows:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." [Emphasis mine]
Instead of the emotional, economic, and lifelong ties and incentives that Southern slaveowners often had that encouraged them to treat their slaves well, and the residue of those ties during the Jim Crow era, there was a bleak, soulless, prison system that developed in order to handle all of the black criminals that arose from the vacuum left by the white liberals after the 60s.
The incarceration rate in the United States is currently the 6th highest in the entire world, and it has remained massive for decades, since the 70s. The American incarceration rate is higher than in Iran, Russia, China; higher than in every African country except Rwanda; higher than in almost every country in Asia, Central, and South America. In terms of absolute numbers, the US has the highest amount incarcerated in the world. India's incarcerated population is less than a third of the US incarcerated despite having more than four times the total population.
This is clearly out of control and it is not an inevitable consequence of black people's temperament or nature, proven by the fact that crime was under control and black families were largely intact prior to the 60s.
A major solution to this problem is to restore sexual morality, through both social and legal changes. Before the sexual revolution, it was illegal (and such laws were enforced) to commit crimes like adultery, fornication, homosexual intercourse, and incest. Divorce was strongly discouraged, both socially and legally, and the authority of the man over his household was recognized, again both socially and legally.
On Hispanics:
The Monroe Doctrine has been used to justify many things throughout American history, and in past decades, those things have been stupid. Blindly prescribing sanctions when things don't go the way of the American elite instead of engaging in dialogue and finding solutions that are mutually beneficial has contributed in major ways to the demand for immigration into the country. A more reasonable foreign policy towards Central and South American countries that advocates for American interest will go a long way.
On American Indians:
Prior to the War Between The States, it was federal policy to act as a kind of conservator and civilizer of American Indians, as described in Thomas Jefferson's second inaugural address. Beginning with the Lincoln administration, this policy transformed into one of assimilation, which more or less meant extinction and the abandonment of the agreements that had been made and would be made between the American Indians and the United States. A very easy way to appeal to American Indians (and do the right thing) is to simply advocate for a return to the honoring of the agreements that were willingly made with them.
In all of the previous examples, there is historical precedent for the use of the Bacon strategy: during Bacon's Defense (whites and blacks), during the Texas Revolution (Anglos and Hispanics), and during the War Between The States (Confederates and Cherokee, Seminole, Creek, and Osage Indians). There is one group, however, which is quite new to the political scene, and so has no major historical precedent in the implementation of the Bacon strategy.
On women:
There is a crisis of confidence in men among American women. American men of the previous century gave up their authority without much fight and now the younger generations are growing up in a world without strong role models and without encouragement in the right direction. The result is that many men are lost and purposeless. Men must recover their lost purpose and authority and demonstrate to women that they are capable of being masculine, competent, and strong leaders. In response, women will gladly give up their current unhappy place in society, and return to something like what Alexis De Tocqueville described in his 1840 work, Democracy in America, Vol. 2:
"In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes, and to make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways which are always different. American women never manage the outward concerns of the family, or conduct a business, or take a part in political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor of the fields, or to make any of those laborious exertions which demand the exertion of physical strength. No families are so poor as to form an exception to this rule. If on the one hand an American woman cannot escape from the quiet circle of domestic employments, on the other hand she is never forced to go beyond it. [...]
Nor have the Americans ever supposed that one consequence of democratic principles is the subversion of marital power, of the confusion of the natural authorities in families. They hold that every association must have a head in order to accomplish its object, and that the natural head of the conjugal association is man. They do not therefore deny him the right of directing his partner; and they maintain, that in the smaller association of husband and wife, as well as in the great social community, the object of democracy is to regulate and legalize the powers which are necessary, not to subvert all power. This opinion is not peculiar to one sex, and contested by the other: I never observed that the women of America consider conjugal authority as a fortunate usurpation of their rights, nor that they thought themselves degraded by submitting to it. It appeared to me, on the contrary, that they attach a sort of pride to the voluntary surrender of their own will, and make it their boast to bend themselves to the yoke, not to shake it off. Such at least is the feeling expressed by the most virtuous of their sex; the others are silent; and in the United States it is not the practice for a guilty wife to clamor for the rights of women, whilst she is trampling on her holiest duties. [...]
As for myself, I do not hesitate to avow that, although the women of the United States are confined within the narrow circle of domestic life, and their situation is in some respects one of extreme dependence, I have nowhere seen woman occupying a loftier position; and if I were asked, now that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply – to the superiority of their women."