Zinn Chapter 3 Study Questions

AJ Santos 5th period

1) The thesis for chapter 3 was based on the fact that the colonies had worked their way into a revolution. 2) Indians were intruding on colonist land and the increasing power of the large farmers overtook small farmers so Bacon uses their anger towards that to rebel which led to Bacons rebellion. 3) The "double motive" in bacons rebellion was to divide and conquer the Indians so that they would not cause so much harm to the farmers. In addition, it was to keep the farmers in line with threats of death if they took matters into their own hands and otherwise rebelled against the government. 4) In Bacons rebellion, former Indentured Servants were the majority that took part in the rebellion. 5) Indentured servants or the headright system, was when rich men gained 50 acres of land for each servant that was paid a trip through the Atlantic Crossing. 6) Indentured servants were packed into ships with the same arrangement from the middle passage. In addition, if they ran into bad weather, they would run out of food and lead towards cannibalism. In addition, 106 passengers died of starvation and six were eaten by other passengers. In summation, the trips between the middle passage and the indentured servants were relatively the same. 7) Once indentured servants were free, they became lazy, rough, ignorant, lewd, and often criminal. The majority of them were poor and ruined individuals. 8) In the 1700s, agriculture grew as the population in the colonies grew, like the cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia. In addition, small manufacturing was developed and shipping and trading had increased. 9) Zinn provides that out of 1000 property owners and that the 1 percent of the population consisted of 50 wealthy individuals had 25 percent of the wealth. The top 1 percent owned 44 percent of the wealth and created a monopoly in Boston. 10) The statement, The country therefore was not born free but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich, is referring to the separation of classes and their rights as individuals. Born slave and free explains that a slave was born into slavery and had to earn freedom, same as to servant and master. Then tenant and landlord, and the poor and the rich explain the differences in the status of colonists. 11) The Indians were kept at a distance by the rich by monopolizing and making the landless whites to move westward to the frontier, which then the Indians were separated in a created buffer. 12) Parliament had created transportation to the New World a punishment for crime as they feared that an attempt of rebellion would spring up and succeed. 13) The statement race was becoming more and more practical, states that racism is not natural but is coming out of the class scorn, meaning that the rich had a device for control. Furthermore race had become more practical as there was a black to white difference.