“The colonies, it seems, were societies of contending classes—a fact obscured by the emphasis, in traditional histories, on the external struggle against England, the unity of colonists in the Revolution.” Zinn (Page 39) What exactly were people thinking? Did they think that colonies were going to be any different then England? Segregation remained among the classes and “land of the free” was non-existent. In fact Howard Zinn goes on to suggest that “The country therefore was not “born free” but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich.” The treatment among the working class of bad, but even working white were treated far better then the blacks. After studying economics it would only make since to me that the better that you treat your workers the better work they produce.
The fear of the whites being supreme didn’t just stop in New England, but when the first settlers, Barbadians in the 1670’s used captured enemies from other tribes as slaves and exported them as well to the Caribbean. However, as rice production expanded so did the fear amongst the early settlers that they too would be used as slaves on their plantations by the whites. Later black slaves in South Carolina would lend a vital hand to white plantation owners in cultivating indigo, and South Carolina grew to become the largest slave owning state in the colonies. Foner (Page 134)
Works Cited
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. Abridged Teaching Edition. New York, NY: The New Press, 2003. Print.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History. 2nd Ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2005. Print.
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