Howard Zinn and the Us Constitution free essay sample

Indentured servants were originally made up of mostly young white males who were trading their time in prison or their poverty for time working as a servant. The number of indentured servants began to decrease and soon after English colonists looked for other potential people to enslave. The Virginia colony needed labor. They needed to grow corn for subsistence, and needed to grow tobacco for export because they had just learned to grow tobacco. Virginia couldnt make the Indians work for them Like Christopher Columbus had done In the past.The colonists would be outnumbered if they decided to try to take over the Indians even though they were equipped with firearms. The Indians were resourceful, defiant, tough, and practically fearless. The colony needed an alternate choice. African slaves were the answer to Virginians labor problem. Blacks had already been imported as slaves to South America and the Caribbean to Spanish and Portuguese colonies. We will write a custom essay sample on Howard Zinn and the Us Constitution or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The blacks made enslavement easier because of how hopeless they were.They were robbed of their homeland and culture and In most cases they were separated from their families. Zion referred to the slavery against the blacks to be the cruelest form of slavery in history. The British were taxing the colonial population to pay for the French war. Many colonists did not agree with the Stamp Act and wanted it repealed. That summer, Benzene Macintosh, a shoemaker, led a mob In destroying the house of a rich Boston merchants like Andrew Oliver and Thomas Hutchinson.Rioters smashed up their houses with axes, drank all the wine in the cellars, and looted the houses of the furniture and other objects. English officers reported these acts to be a part of a larger scheme in which the houses of 15 rich people were to be destroyed. The riots against the Stamp Act swept Boston in 1767. It took the Stamp Act crisis to make the leadership aware of its dilemma. After the riots a town meeting was arranged and mainly upper and middle class citizens were allowed to attend.Zion argues the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, may have had ulterior economic and class preservation motivations that were hidden by the universal language of the constitution document. Zion also argues that the rich, In order to secure their own interests and economic status, must either control the government directly or control the laws by which government operates. Zion often refers to the views and writings of historian Charles Beard. Beard studied the economic backgrounds and political ideas of the fifty-five men who majority of them were lawyers by profession, most of them were wealthy due to land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping. Half of them had money loaned out at interest, and that forty out of fifty held government bonds according to the records of the treasury department. Beard also found that most of the makers of the constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government. Beard did not think the constitution as written to benefit the Founding Fathers reasonably.The problem of democracy in the post- revolutionary society was not however the constitutional limitations on voting. It lay much deeper beyond the constitution in the division of society into rich and poor. The constitution then illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of wealthy elite, but also does enough for small owners, for middle-income farmers and mechanics to bu ild a broad base of support. Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury and one of the Founding Fathers, believed that the government must ally itself with the richest elements of society to make itself strong.