The First Revolution - Six Parts in Seven

American Political History · Jul 24, 2021 · 19m

One hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, a Virginia planter named Nathaniel Bacon led an armed revolt against the colonial government — and the grievances he carried read like a first draft of 1776. Taxation without consent. Corrupt officials. A governing class that protected its own wealth and left the common man to fend for himself on a burning frontier.

This is the opening of the season: the world that made the rebellion inevitable. A tobacco colony where six men in seven were poor, indebted, and armed — Governor William Berkeley's own words. A closed loop of courts…