Реферат: The Opressed Essay Research Paper The Oppressed
quantity…. As for free white settlers, many of them were skilled
craftsmen, or even men of leisure back in England, who were so little
inclined to work the land that John Smith… had to declare a kind of
martial law, organize them into work gangs, and force them into the
fields for survival…..
?Black slaves were the answer. And it was natural to consider imported
blacks as slaves, even if the institution of slavers would not be
regularized and legalized for several decades? (25).
Black slavery became an American institution that the southern and
middle colonies began to depend on for their economic success. The first
stirrings of resentment began to come not from the slaves but from the
proletariat in the form of the frontier whites. Nathaniel Bacon led a
revolution against Virginia governor William Berkeley and his
conciliatory Indian policies. Bacon and others who lived on the western
frontier wanted more protection from the government against Indian
attacks. Berkeley and his cronies were so concerned with their own
financial and political gain that they ignored Bacon?s Rebellion and
continued their policies. In the end, Bacon died a natural death (he
caught a nasty virus) and his friends were hanged, but for the first
time ever, the government was forced to listen to the grievances of the
underclass that had been for the most part largely ignorable up to that
point. Meanwhile, class distinctions became sharper and the poor grew in
number. Citizens were put into work houses for debt and occasionally
rioted against the wealthy. More and more though, the anger turned from
being just a class war to being a war of nationalities. Impressment and
other British policies distracted the colonists from being mad at the
bourgeoisie to being mad at their mother country. At the end of chapter
three, tension is mounting, pitting the Americans against the English
and the workers against the rich. The atmosphere was ripe for