The Revolution: Trick or Treat?

In Zinn’s analysis of the social classes of the revolution, he makes the same conclusions that Carl Deglar, Edmund Morgan, John Shy and many other historians have made: The structures of the social classes in Colonial America did not experience much change during or after The Revolution. Although many good things did come from the Revolution, the majority of society did not reap these benefits. Zinn underlines this theme when he quoted John Shy: “Revolutionary America may have been a middle-class society, happier and more prosperous than any other in it’s time, but it contained a large and growing number of fairly poor people, and many of the did much of the actual fighting and suffering between 1775 and 1783: a very old story” (79)
The leaders of the revolution, our “Founding Fathers”, were not of the repressed, fighting and courageous lower class despite romanticized legend. He sides with Carl Deglar’s statement on this from Out of Our Past: George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer” (85). When it cam time to fight for America’s freedom, there was a giant loophole. “…The Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered the townsmen to show up on the Common for the military draft. The rich, it turned out, could avoid the draft by paying for substitutes, the poor had to serve” (75)
The ruling that early America saw was essentially, did not differ much from the rule of England. The lower class was still angered by their lack of voice and liberty. And so resulted the slue of rebellions: Shay’s Rebellion, The Riot of New Years Day 1781, The Actions of the Insurgents or “Regulators” and so on. So how did the leaders of our forming country pull it together? Poetry, basically. Inspirational Poetry. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever and Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government….
… All of this language of popular control over governments, the right of rebellion and revolution, indignation at political tyranny, economic burdens and military attacks, was well suited to unite large number of colonists, and persuade even those who had grievances against one another to turn against England.” (71-72)

Some may see that the colonists were tricked by the emerging government to join them against England, with promise of a better life. Others may see it as the Government did the best they could, but still had to inflict some not so far regulations upon the colonists. It is up for interpretation.