Reading the first paragraph I get the feeling that Zinn does not like the Robber Barons at all with the words “at the expense of black labor, white labor, Chinese labor, European immigrant labor, female labor, rewarding them differently by race, sex, national origin, and social class”. Zinn’s world paints the picture in my head of these men standing…
Holton observes that relations between two classes are often deeply influenced by a third class. Scholars have traditionally conceived of the American Revolution as a conflict between white American colonists (usually embodied in elites like Thomas Jefferson or George Washington) and the British government. Holton sees our founders as having been "forced" into seeking Independence by lower-class whites and racial subalterns whose contrary interests provided an opening for the British to undermine antagonistic elites in places like Virginia.…
Revolutionary War leaders attracted recruits by promising them to rise in rank, acquire some money, and change their social status.…
Gordon interpret the events of the 1800’s entirely different. Both present strong arguments using facts; However, Zinn’s use of statistics makes his argument slightly stronger. To the contrary, both manipulate the facts to support their agendas, which imposes a weakness in their writing styles. A well-rounded argument offers both perspectives on one topic so that the reader can make his or her own inferences. Zinn’s argument screams socialism; while he bashes big business for the sake of the people, he barely refers to the cruel endeavors of the workers. Zinn could have made his argument stronger by referring less to government-corporate relationships and more to worker-corporate relationships. He, also, refuses to see any good in the robber barons’ philanthropy. Similarly, Gordon refuses to acknowledge the effect of big business on the workers in its entirety. However, he does show the opposition’s perspective in his article when he refers to the corporate-competition relationship. With that being said, one can infer that not one author is correct in his opinion of the big businessmen; big business was cruel and kind through their philanthropist…
Where to begin with the multitude of facts left out? Such hints equating material inequities with injustice abound in Zinn’s history. Zinn banks on the fact that schools produce graduates with only “a smattering of knowledge about the American past” at best—and almost no understanding about the foundations and intellectual history of our government. Other questions come up in regards to the rationale of our system of government. Zinn, in what has now become standard practice, indicts the founders for leaving out of the idea of all men being “created equal” black men, property-less men, and women. Then he preempts the reply that such exclusions have since been corrected by claiming that The problem of democracy in the post-Revolutionary society was not, however, Constitutional limitations on voting. It lay deeper, beyond the Constitution, in the division of society into rich and poor. For if some people had great wealth and great influence; if they had the land, the money, the newspapers, the church, the educational system—how could voting, however broad, cut into such power? There was still another problem: wasn’t it the nature of representative government, even when most broadly based, to be conservative, to prevent tumultuous change?20 Indeed, this sets up the basis for the rest of Zinn’s critique through over 700 tedious pages. All of Zinn’s analyses of succeeding events and developments follow from the flawed premise and the unwillingness to acknowledge the fact that his question had already been answered by the founders. Differences arise also from Zinn’s goals. Zinn is after “tumultuous change.” He seeks to overthrow the government rather than reform it. And he will display this view in his academic activities, especially when it comes to the civil rights movement. The need for “tumultuous” change will inform like-minded radicals who will keep raising the bar even as…
Howard Zinn covers early Native American civilization in North America and the Bahamas, the genocide and slavery committed by the crew of Christopher Columbus, and the violent colonization by early settlers. While Paul Johnson stated that “the creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures”. Their points of views are completely 2 different stories.…
Howard Zinn’s argument on the nature of the American War for Independence was the war for independence was not a social revolution. Instead, he argues the colonial elite used the war for their own personal gain in power and status. The wealthy and powerful found a strategy to maintain and even increase their social and political status by leading the war against England and the courtiers associated with England.…
Zinn states that the Founding Fathers were not enlightened as they are portrayed in history. “In fact, they did not want a balance, except one which kept things as they were a balance among the dominant forces at that time. Zinn further expands upon this by the fact that there was no consideration for equal balance between slaves and masters, property less and property holders, Indians and white’s protection it seems at first…
In The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991), Gordon S. Wood argues there were three distinct periods of social ideology in early American society, monarchy, republicanism, and democracy. While each era progressed chronologically, they were in no way distinct, with considerable ideological overlap occurring between them. The monarchy, which dominated American culture during the colonial period, was a series of hierarchical relationships denoted by various levels of dependency through personal ties. Republicanism, beginning in the 1740s, slowly chipped away at the fundamental principles of monarchical society. Revolutionary leaders highlighted the importance of classical virtues as changes in social demographics further disintegrated the traditional elements holding society together. The era of democracy, which Wood believes began after the defeat of the British, found its beginnings in the rhetoric of pre-revolutionary equality. This is the age when the revolutionary leader’s lofty ambitions of disinterested classical republicanism, was destroyed by the common man’s insistence on self-interested participation and a pursuit of personal gains.…
Howard Zinn's writing discusses the American Revolution, putting military actions in social and cultural context. On one hand, forming a militia quickly was possible because so many colonists were armed. On the other hand, the new nation soon started forcing sailors to join the war, which had been one of the complaints against the British. Period observers noted that military leaders such as George Washington reinforced strict class hierarchies, and the Continental Congress that came together to write the new nation's laws was overwhelming made up of the rich, leaving the same men in power as had been in charge in the colonies. Once the revolution was won, Americans assumed they could take Indian lands to the west. Many discharged soldiers were not paid, or were paid in devalued currency, and the result was riots.…
A prevalent question that comes up while studying America’s past is “was the American Revolution a true revolution?”. Depending on the whether the historian sides with the theory of a strict or loose constructionist, the answer will vary. Strict constructionists tend to believe that a revolution produces a significant end result whereas loose constructionists refer to any type of violence in conjunction with a constitution, rulers, or policies. This differentiation leads to the topics of conservatism and radicalism. In correlation with the American revolution, conservatists claim that the outcome of the revolution was nothing great. On the other hand, radicalists feel that the changes after the revolution were extraordinary. Pulitzer Prize-winning Carl N. Delger agrees with the conservatists…
The book Founding Fathers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis demonstrated or portrayed the overview of the early American years to the post-revolutionary era. To emphasize, the book Founding Fathers mainly focuses on the main or background perspective of our true founding fathers. To add, the author Joseph J. Ellis does a great job pointing out the information that was never read or anyone knew about. The author shows the problems that our founding fathers faced and the way they are portrayed in our modern texts or readings.…
The Founding Brothers reveal Ellis disagreement with contemporary historians on the role of politics in the shaping of the United States. Unlike many other people, Ellis regards the successes of the founding member of the United States as “god written destiny” rather than the struggle of the American Revolution. Unlike many other revolutions of its kind, the American Revolution was able to hold its infant nation together with little bloodshed despite failure of the Article of the Confederation and division of ideology within its founding member. These divisions would, however, ultimately end with the American Civil War. The founding of the United States and the very ideology behind it would continually be raised up to question when one began…
In the chapter 13, “The Socialist Challenge”, Zinn’s underlying point to highlight the horror and mistreatment working class Americans faced prior to the creation of laws that protected them. To show and support these ideas, Zinn showcases various events in history when working Americans were treated as replaceable and unworthy of protection; while also highlighting the poor, dangerous conditions they were expected to work in.…
Over the course of the seventeenth- and mid-eighteenth-century a wide variety of groups and individuals have sailed across the Atlantic and settled in America. Settling in this new environment was most certainly hard, but as time passed America transformed into a more complex civilization and so too did its identity and unity. Still ruled under Great Britain the colonists were able to create a unique identity and partial sense of unity as time progressed. The colonists had a full sense of their identity being the egalitarian, self-reliant people that they were, but lacked complete unity, still indecisive about breaking away from their mother country by the eve of the Revolution.…