Once again, Zinn highlights the side of history that is not commonly acknowledged. He again reconstructs my opinion of the people that lead this country and the comparison between who i thought they were verse the actuality of who they were. The American revolution is a topic that students learn about from a very young age. It tells the tale of the founding fathers who were intelligent men that organized a revolution to fight Englands oppression and free the United States. Yet in actuality, the founding fathers were elitist white men who said “every man is created equal” but had a very narrow definition of “all men”.
The revolution seems something like something comparable to the situation with indentured servitude. When it was advertised, the people that were impacted by it were deceived into thinking it would be something very different than what it actually turned out to be. The middle and lower classes, who were the ones who actually did the fighting, were tricked into a fight that was more beneficial for the upper class. The upper class claimed to be fight for everyone, but they were fighting to keep their own power and position in society, and get rid of England who they were under.
The United States continually had conflicting actions and words. They had the bill of rights, but then pact the Sedition act. The government of the people was a government that would quell rebellion and disagreement by utilizing its power and manipulating the people of different classes, races and backgrounds.
I really liked how you compared the American Revolution to indentured servitude in colonial America. I think there is a gad in how events are presented to us verse what they actually are/how they actually happened. We learn that the wealthy landowning male colonist built the country from the ground up. We also learn that is was those same elite men who fought so heroically against British tyranny to create a free country. A free country where all men are created equal. But we never learn about the whole truth of the events and the efforts of the other minority groups in the colonies who had probably the greatest role in building America into what it was/is and fighting against England.
I agree it’s interesting to learn that the ideas of the Revolution that everyone has known forever, about the founding fathers, are not necessarily completely true and there is a lot that we don’t actually realize. I like how you compared it to indentured servitude, because it is definitely true. The founding fathers were supposed to be the ones who created this country where all men are created equal, and thats what people though they would get, but in reality it was a lot different. The middle class did most the work, and not everyone was considered equal.