Nathaniel Bacon (1647-1676) was an American colonial leader in Virginia and the leader of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676.

The period of American colonial history which followed the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in England (1660) was an era of political and economic instability. Typical of the way converging problems could lead to civil conflict was Bacon's Rebellion. The youthful Nathaniel Bacon took charge of discontented frontiersmen and, during the course of an Indian war, virtually assumed control of the colony of Virginia. The results of Bacon's Rebellion were not lasting; most of the legislative reforms were repealed at its end, and 23 of its leaders met their death by hanging.

Nathaniel Bacon was born on Jan. 2, 1647, at Friston Hall, Suffolk, England. He was the only son of Thomas Bacon, a wealthy landowner. A contemporary remembered him as being tall and slender, "blackhair'd and of an ominous, pensive melancholy Aspect ... not much...