Chapter 4: Tyranny is
Tyranny
Jazzteen Rae Arizala
Professor Gabriel Buelna
CHS 245 OL 14003
Introduction
“Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from whom it may” (Zinn, 75).
British Empire vs. Colonial Elite
Chapter 4 of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States,
titled “Tyranny is Tyranny,” discusses the aftermath of the
French and Indian War and America’s struggle for
independence.
As American leadership was less in need of British rule, the
English were more in need of colonial revenue; “they found that
by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United
States, they could take over land profits, and political power from
favorites of the British Empire” (Zinn, 59).
However, class hatred would undermine any power American
leadership would choose to hold over colonies.
Bacon’s Rebellion
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Since Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia there were eighteen uprisings
whose goal was to overthrow the government. American leadership saw
this as an opportunity to steer insurgent energy against the British
Empire.
The Boston Caucus, lawyers, editors, and merchants excluded from the
colonial elite, “molded laboring-class opinion, called the ‘mob’ into
action, and shaped its behavior” (Zinn, 60). The upper class easily
mobilized lower class energy for their own purposes through
empathetic oratory and writing.
Stamp Act of 1765
Stamp Act of 1765
The accumulated sense of grievance towards the rich may have
accounted for the riots that followed the Stamp Act of 1765.
The Stamp Act allowed the British to tax the American colony to
pay for the expenditures of the French War.
Colonists began targeting the homes of fifteen pro-British elite
and destroyed them as part of “a War of Plunder, of general
levelling and taking away the Distinction of rich and poor” (Zinn,
61). Through these riots, the poor colonists made clear what their
motive was after the French War.
“Is it equitable that 99, rather 999, should suffer for the
Extravagance or Grandeur of one, especially when it is considered
that men frequently owe their Wealth to the impoverishment of
their neighbors?” (Zinn, 62).
1776 Elections in Pennsylvania
The lower middle class, especially
mechanics, pushed for open-air meetings
in which the general population could
participate in making policy, as well as
elect more mechanics and other ordinary
people into government positions.
During elections for the 1776
convention, a Privates Committee wrote
a bill of rights, including the statement
that “an enormous proportion of
property vested in a few individuals is
dangerous to the rights, and destructive
of the common happiness, of mankind;
and therefore every free state hath a right
by its laws to discourage the possession of
such property” (Zinn, 62).
The Privates Committee urged voters to
oppose “great and overgrown rich men”
(Zinn, 62).
Regulator Movement
During the period between 1766 and
1771, the years during which agitation
against the British began crowding out
class hatred, a powerful movement
emerged in North Carolina.
A group of white farmers organized to
“prevent the collection of taxes, or the
confiscation of the property of tax
deliquents” and to attempt to
democratize local government (Zinn,
64).
The movement was so powerful, with
“the support of six thousand to seven
thousand out of a total white taxable
population of about eight thousand,”
that it was finally defeated in May of
1771 through military action (Zinn,
65).
Loyal Nine
The revolutionary leaders “had a divided white population; they
could win over the mechanics, who were kind of a middle class, who
had a stake in the fight against England, who faced competition from
English manufacturers. The biggest problem was to keep the
propertyless people, who were unemployed and hungry in the crisis
following the French war, under control” (Zinn, 65).
The Stamp Act crisis helped the leaders understand these sentiments, as
well as how to drive it against the British.
A political group in Boston called the Loyal Nine who opposed the
Stamp Act mobilized thousands of craftsmen, mechanics, and
apprentices in a procession in August 1765 against the Act.
Once the Stamp Act was repealed, the “gentlemen” who organized
the procession severed their ties with the protestors (Zinn, 66).
Boston Massacre
Boston Massacre
On March 5, 1770, agitation from ropemakers against British soldiers
taking their job. The crowd of ropemakers began provoking the
soldiers, who fired and killed first a worker named Crispus Attucks.
John Adams, defense attorney for the British soldiers, described the
crowd of ropemakers as “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes, and
molattoes, Irish teagues, and outlandish jack tarrs” (Zinn, 67).
The tens of thousands of people who marched in a procession for the
funeral of the massacre’s victims led to the British pulling out their
troops from Boston.
Mobilizing Against the British
In order to relieve class tensions the talents of orators like Patrick
Henry were much to be considered; “this was to find language
inspiring to all classes, specific enough in its listing of grievances
to charge people with anger against the British, vague enough to
avoid class conflict among the rebels, and stirring enough to build
patriotic feeling for the resistance movement” (Zinn, 68).
It seemed that oratory and writing were the only ways in which a
bond between the upper and the lower classes can be forged.
One of the boldest arguments for Independence came from Tom
Paine’s Common Sense: “Society in every state is a blessing, but
Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil…” (Zinn,
69).
Works Cited
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States.
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005. Print.