They found the colony in a deplorable condition. With the people bitter and sullen, with neighbor arrayed against neighbor, with hundreds of houses and barns in ashes, with trade disrupted, there was need for unselfish and statesmanlike guidance. There should have been an immediate restoration of the rule of law, so that no man could be made to suffer without a trial before his peers. There should have been an election of Burgesses, in which the people could make their choices without pressure from the Governor and the Council. There should have been an honest effort to assuage flaming resentments, to give heed to the people's grievances, to unite all classes in binding up the wounds of war and bringing peace and some measure of prosperity to the distracted colony. The situation was not unlike that in the South at the close of the War between the States. And as the South, after the assassination of President Lincoln, was left a prey to vultures--the so-called Carpetbaggers and Scaliwags--Virginia after the collapse of Bacon's Rebellion, was sacrificed to the vindictiveness and greed of Berkeley and his supporters. "Two wrongs do not make a right." Though a loyalist may have suffered severely by the plundering of rebel bands, he was not justified in trying to make good his losses by robbing a neighbor, even though that neighbor had sided with Bacon. But the Governor, instead of insisting that his friends seek restitution only through the courts, himself was foremost in making illegal seizures. When he returned to Green Spring, the sight of his plundered house and barns, and the empty meadows where once hundreds of cattle and sheep had grazed drove him to fury. He showed "a greedy determination thoroughly to heal himself before he cared to staunch the bleeding gashes of the woefully lacerated country," by seizing men's "estates, cattle, servants, and carrying off their tobacco."[4] Some of the wretched men who were dragged before him he threatened with hanging unless they gave him most or all that they owned. A certain James Barrow was imprisoned at Green Spring, where "by reason of the extremity of cold, hunger, loathsomeness of vermin," he was forced to agree to the payment of a ruinous composition.[5] The King's commissioners received a cool reception from Berkeley. He wanted no investigation of the causes of the rebellion, he wanted no interference with his hangings and seizures. He pointed out that he had suppressed the rebellion before the arrival of the troops, and pretended to be surprised that the King had thought it necessary to send them.[6] When the commissioners told him that illegal seizures must stop, he flew into such a rage that they decided that future communication with him should be by writing. This would avoid the "loud and fierce speaking" necessitated by his deafness.[7]