After reading the chapter “A Kind of Revolution” in our text, I felt like I had just read the transcript for one of John Green’s Crash Course history videos. Although a little overwhelmed with all the information, I now feel like I have a good base of the background history of the US during the later 1700s, even though I did take AP US History junior year and it was giving me not-so friendly flashbacks. Although much of the information I had learned about before, I felt like the facts were not just facts, but part of a story due to the conversational tone of the writing, which I really enjoyed.<\/p>\n
One part that really stood out to me from this chapter was when it was highlighting how the Revolution started to create a space for blacks to start making demands of white society, and the author includes a excerpt from Benjamin Banneker who was appointed to plan the new city of Washington. I thought his phrase, “…One universal Father hath given being to us all; and that he hath not only made us all one flesh, but that he hath also, without partiality, afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the same facilities…” was extremely powerful and was definitely a big stepping stone in gaining rights for the blacks (89).<\/p>\n
I also found many of the statistical information astonishing. I could not believe during the Revolutionary period, 1\/3 of the population were small farmers, while only 3% of the population had large holdings and could be considered wealthy. In addition, the fact that in Maryland to run for governor one had to own 5,000 pounds of property, or 1,000 pounds for senator, which excluded 90% of the population from office. I always knew about the large gap between the elite holding all the cards and everyone else in society, but I don’t think I ever realized how far the gap widened and just how much the wealthy did control, with so little people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After reading the chapter “A Kind of Revolution” in our text, I felt like I had just read the transcript for one of John Green’s…<\/p>\n