Bacon’s Rebellion was the result of discontent among backcountry farmers who had taken the law into their own hands against government corruption and oppression. Many Virginians were debtors. Borrowing on the strength of paper money was stopped by the British Government, leading to more discontent against the merchant classes. Many of the supporters of the rebellion were indentured servants and slaves, who were a majority of Virginia’s population.

Historian Helen Hill Miller has pointed out that one of the most important reforms made during Bacon’s government was the recognition of the right to bear arms, so that the common man could defend himself from hostile Indians but also to oppose a despotic regime. After Berkeley’s resumption of power, this right was one of the first he repealed. Miller suggests it was Bacon’s Rebellion that may have served as one of the motives for later colonists’ insistence the right to bear arms. Historian Stephen Saunders Webb suggests that Bacon’s Rebellion was a revolution, with roots in the English Civil War and with consequences including the American Revolutionary War.

It was largely the slaves, servants and poor farmers many of whom were former indentured servants who rebelled. Before the rebellion, African slaves were rare in Virginia, mainly due to their expense and the lack of slave traders bringing Africans to Virginia. Many Africans were brought as indentured servants, becoming free after serving their term of labor. While indentured servants from Europe continued to play a role in Virginia after the rebellion, African slave imports grew rapidly and new laws made slavery lifelong and passed on to one’s children, creating a racially-based class system with Africans at the bottom and even the poorest European indentured servants above. This broke the common interest between the poor English and the Africans of Virginia which had existed during Bacon’s Rebellion.

The rebellion strengthened the ties between Virginia south of the James River and the Albemarle Settlements in present-day North Carolina, while creating a long-lasting animosity between the two colonies’ governments. The Albemarle region offered refuge for rebels in the aftermath. In the longer term, North Carolina offered an alternative to colonists disenchanted with Virginia