Howard Zinn does a very complete explanation of how the American Revolution started through the words of Elite figures of the time. The revolution was based extremely on the social class struggle of the lower class trying to up their social status by being freed through the war, the middle class trying to keep what they had in their land and views on politics such as the loyalist ways, and the upper/Elite class trying to defend their power by passing laws and bills which could better themselves, their status, and their family. As Zinn explains in this quote,“ The Continental Congress , which governed the colonies through the war was dominated by rich men, linked together in factions and compacts by business and family connections.” (Zinn, 80)
He starts the chapter A Hand of Revolution by explaining that the Revolutionary leadership knew it would be an extensive task to get the average white man on-board with the revolutionary ideas. Because the “revolution had no appeal to the slaves or the Indians,” he claims, “They would have to woo the armed white population.”(Zinn, 77) It started with attempting to recruit armed white men to join the colonial militia. They excluded “..friendly Indians, free Negroes, white servants, and free white men who had no stable home.”(Zinn, 78) Because number of Armed white men wanting to fight was very small, it forced recruitment to take the less respectable, homeless, and unarmed men.
“Revolutionary America may have been a middle-class society, happier and more prosperous than any other in its time, but it contained a large and growing number of fairly poor people, and many of them did much of the actual fighting and suffering between 1775 and 1783.” This goes to show that while the colonies had a structured class society with Slaves and Indians at the bottom followed by white servants and women , then non-landowning whites, landowning whites and lastly the elite class with wealthy plantation owners, lawyers and merchants, much of the change during the revolution was fought out by the lower middle class.
A major example of how wealth and status played a role in the Revolution, Zinn explains how, “In Maryland, for instance, by the new constitution of 1776, to run for governor one had to own 5,000 pounds of property; to run for state senator, 1,000 pounds. Thus, 90 percent of the population were excluded from holding office. And so, as Hoffman says, ‘small slave holders, non-slaveholding planters, tenants, renters, and casual day laborers posed a serious problem of social control for the Whig elite.” (Zinn, 82) This poses a major issue in trying to have equality throughout the social and governmental levels. Furthermore, “They (Maryland authorities) made concessions, taxing land and slaves more heavily, letting debtors pay in paper money. It was a sacrifice by the upper class to maintain power, and it worked” (Zinn, 83) At all costs the Elites and authorities were fighting to maintain their status and power. Once again, a class battle.
Another example of class implications could be seen in the mistreatment of loyalists who did not want any part of the war. The general mood was to take no part in a war that seemed to have nothing for them. Authorities demanded that they supply the troops and consume less for themselves; many however, were loyal to Britain and not to the revolutionary cause and did just the opposite of what the authorities asked of them. “Washington’s military commander in the lower south, Nathaniel Greene, dealt with disloyalty by a policy of concessions to some, brutality to others.” (Zinn, 83) He went to the south where people were not on-board for the war effort and had his troops brutalize them and kill a good portion to show the loyalists that they can either get on-board or leave. He explains, “It has had a very happy effect on those disaffected persons of which there were too many in this country.” (Zinn, 83) They brutalized loyalists because they did not agree with the efforts of the war and thus the elite military status punished the middle class which did not wish to follow. Also, much of the loyalists land was taken for not supporting the war effort and in return they offered the land to anyone willing to join after the war effort was over. However, once again, as Zinn describes “One would look, in examining the Revolution’s effect on class relations, at what happened to land confiscated from fleeing Loyalists. It was distributed in such a way as to give a double opportunity to the Revolutionary leaders: to enrich themselves and their friends, and to parcel out some land to small Farmers to create a broad base of support for the new government.”(Zinn, 84) The Elite class could get more land from the incentives than could any man in the militia.
“The huge landholdings of the Loyalists had been one of the great incentives to Revolution. Lord Fairfax in Virginia had more than 5 million acres encompassing twenty-one counties. Lord Baltimore’s income from his Maryland holdings exceeded 30,000 pounds a year. After the Revolution, Lord Fairfax was protected; he was a friend of George Washington. But other Loyalist holders of great estates, especially those who were absentees, had their land confiscated.” (Zinn,84) This just goes to show how being or knowing someone in the Elite class could get you a free ticket to anything or protected by anything. This Shows that the class system during the Revolutionary years was quite crooked, just as it could possibly be today. We could possibly consider corporations to be the “elite class’ nowadays with the select few government officials and rich business moguls.
During the revolution, as Zinn describes, the class struggle was even more magnified than it had been at anytime during the history of the nation because while slavery was still around there was also the struggle between wealth and social status. Also, With what Edmund Morgan, Richard Morris, and Carl Degler say about the revolution, it is very much true. With the saying “We The People” The Elite class made “…Town mechanics, laborers, and seamen, as well as small farmers” feel as part of “the people” through “…rhetoric of the Revolution, by the camaraderie of military service, by the distribution of some land (likely to be confiscated land from the Loyalists). Thus was created a substantial body of support, a national consensus, something that, even with the exclusion of ignored and oppressed people, could be called ‘America’.” (Zinn, 85) People were misguided, the government basically gave people, who served for them during the revolution, some land and made them feel part of ‘the people’ even though it was more directed at the people of the Elite Class. Thus, class implications played a major role throughout the revolution.
Work Cited:
1. Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2008. Print.
