Howard Zinn Chapter 3

70 years after Virginia was founded, the white frontiersmen who were joined by slaves and servants started Bacon’s rebellion. It was a rebellion threatening that the governor had to flee the burning capital of Jamestown. The governor of Jamestown, William Berkeley, had two motives to stop the rebellion: one was to develop an Indian policy which would divide Indians in order to control them; and two was to teach the poor whites of Virginia that rebellion didn’t pay off. The servants who joined the rebellion were part of the poor underclass whites who came to North American colonies from European cities whose governments were anxious to be rid of them. An indenture was signed in which the immigrants agreed to pay their cost of passage by working for a master for five or seven years. To make sure they didn’t runaway, they were held captive until the ship was ready to make sail. In 1619 the Virginia House of Burgesses was created. It was the first representative assembly in America and it provided and enforced contracts between the servants and masters. The servants could not have sexual relations with each other and the women were not allowed to get pregnant, and they couldn’t get married. Indentured servants were bought and sold like slaves. The masters were slightly scared of the servants because there were so many rebellions. After Bacon’s Rebellion, the Virginia legislature passed laws to punish the servants who rebelled. It was easier for them to just run away, so many did. Soon, free men had passports to show which proved that they were free men. One in every ten servants that were later set free were successful. John Locke is often considered as the philosophical father of the founding fathers and the American system. He wrote the fundamental constitution in the 1660s. He set up an aristocratic government. By the 1700s the colonies began to take off and double and triple in size. The number of poor and homeless people also began to grow. Rebellions of all professions started. People in Boston who were in debt wanted paper money to get them out of their debt and didn’t want men to be imprisoned for the military. Through this period England was fighting a series of wars, which meant higher taxes, unemployment, and poverty. There was a constant fear of the slaves, Indians, and poor whites taking over; particularly the poor whites and black slaves banning together. After Bacon’s Rebellions, poor white folks were given muskets, among other things, and the black slaves were given nothing, which started to really separate the blacks from the whites. As the whites separated into upper and lower class, there soon came a middle class of small planters, independent farmers, and city artisans. A fact long true about this country as clearly stated by Richard Hofstadter is: “It was a middle-class society governed for the most part by its upper-class. In order for it to work out, the upper class realized that they had to listen to the middle-class, and in doing so, hoping that they could unite just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England without ending either slavery or inequality.