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