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The subject on Bacon's Rebellion wasn't taught to me at all when being taught history.  But it seems to me that this was an important event considering the big movement created by his Rebellion.  Considering that this isn't covered more in history classes is quite surprising.

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Throughout my education of history whenever their was a subject on Africans or African Americans and the English or Americans everything was shown in the perspective of the Africans/African Americans. But when reading this stuff you can see what some of the perspectives of whites were so you kind of have an idea of what they went through as well. But I think some perspectives are shown only because some others are too ugly to be taught or shown.

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As I was reading through the chapter I kept seeing the sort of horrors people in Columbus's time went through. Because of Columbus's shortcomings he seemed to think he needed to have some sort of insurance policy to show Spain that his trips were worth their time and money. But what I think is dumb is how we have a holiday for a man who invaded the Americas and forced people to end their ways of life and force them to new customs they have never seen before.

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It was depressing to actually find out that instead of a free nation that was created because of the war it was more of a transfer of power. First Britain had it and the upper class Americans had some, but now because of the war more and more rich elites had power over the citizens. It really is not what you think of when you think of the founding fathers or the U.S. Constitution.

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This chapter really helped capture the tensions and the inequality that the poorer colonists felt. It really helped paint a picture of the unfair treatment the colonists faced. It was surprising to find out that the lower class Americans did not want war or to separate, it was just the middle and upper class that wanted to. I always though of it as a war everyone wanted.

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It was surprising to learn about Bacons Rebellion so late. It was surprising because it seemed like a extremely important event that sparked a movement in the colonies that resonated with so many colonists. I would of assumed that it would at least be touched upon during regular history classes when learning the basics of the colonies.

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It was odd to find out that slave owners were fearful of there slaves rebelling. In my experience as a student, history has alway been told in the point of view of each slaves. It was interesting to know that the plantation owners were so afraid that there had to be laws placed to help prevent an uprising

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Reading this chapter really opened my eyes as to how much of the horror stories are not told, but instead the glories and victories are. While it'seems portent to include the victories it is equally important to share the horrors so we learn for them. It's quite sad to realize how long it took me to discover the real truth of Christopher Columbus.

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I feel like the Revolutionary war is very similar to slavery in a way. But instead of having a master and slave, you have the relationship of the poor and the wealthy. The similarity between those two is that both the master and the wealthy gains more power and benefits from the arduous work of the slave or the poor. In the Revolutionary case, I always thought of it as a singular group's effort that fought for the cause of freedom. But that was just looking at the topic in general. If you look closer and magnify the topic, you see that the effort was made by mostly the poor and the rich got the credit.

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This chapter actually didn't surprised me at all. Although the rebellion against England did start in the middle class, but it was the lower class that mainly did all the work. Therefore, the middle class used the lower class to gain more power and made sure the lower class didn't. I think this is what this whole chapter was talking about. There is always have been two groups of people throughout the history. The weak and the strong. No matter if it's through the form of slavery, woman, or indenture servants. But the strong always found a way to prey on them and use them for their own benefit.

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The whole subject on Bacon's rebellion only has been quickly covered during my years of history classes. But I feel like this admirable event with such a prestigious guys as Nathaniel Bacon should be covered more in depth. I mean we're talking about a guy who completely went against his family and his society's belief to do what he believe is right and change the course of history.

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Slavery had always been around. The aspect of slavery has been seen through many cultures and can be dated back as far as the ancient times. But it can be guaranteed that slavery also has been around long before that. Although many people can look back in our history with distaste and disgust at our ancestor for doing all these deplorable things. But the fact is that life back then wasn't how it was today. They didn't have machines or the tools we had today to make production easier, but they relied on slavery. That is why I think slavery began in the first place. I'm not saying slavery is right, but I'm trying to say that the belief back then and now was a lot different due to the influence of the society and what they perceived as "wrong" or "right".

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The Revolutionary War was about the colonies creating their own free nation, but it wasn’t just that. It was just a transfer of power. Those who had power took advantage of the new, fragile nation and became even more powerful figures within the government. Before the revolution, power was controlled by Great Britain in order to keep the power for themselves. Colonists wanted more, but not all of them. I didn’t realise that majority of colonists didn’t support the revolution or only supported it for economical advancement. Most history books never talk about these people because they want to make us seem “better.” They wanted the revolution to seem like a team effort that helped everyone in the end. However, it’s not directly stated how it helped the powerful people from beforehand increase their power with a new nation needing someone to look up to.

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Although it was made known that everyone was equal, this wasn’t quite true. Indians, African slaves, indentured servants, and women were not included in the statement, “all men are created equal.” I think they were thought of as not equal because those in power didn’t want to lose it. Things would change if someone from these groups of people came into power and they didn’t want that. We’ve seen this change today in how women are rising as public figures and taking action against things they don’t see as right. Also, an African-American was elected as president which had never happened before as a result of racism and not being equal. They were scared of this kind of thing occurrence as it would lead to their power in society to decline.

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Throughout this chapter Zinn talks about the rise in rebellion between the colonists, mainly wealthy, and those such as Indians, indentured servants, and African slaves. It surprised me how the indentured servants were treated pretty much the same as African slaves, but not disliked nearly as much. This is possibly because indentured servants signed a contract to work for their masters, submitting from the start, while African servants resisted being taken at first. In the end, it’s the same job, but different treatment. From the start of rebelling slaves and servants, the wealthy were being threatened and with that they getting increasingly more desperate in order to keep their power.

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America had slavery in it’s history from the very beginning and Zinn takes the time to explain why he believes that’s so. In this chapter, I feel like Zinn implied more than in the previous chapter. He believed that they used racism as an excuse to justify slavery as well as the fact that Africa enslaved their own people as well, but in a different manner in which they chose to ignore. Furthermore, Zinn goes into great depth of describing the conditions slaves were put in during the voyage from Africa to the US. He implied that the conditions were so harsh in order to force submission into them for when they were put to work. This is a legitimate reason as to why conditions were so but others think it was to cut down on travel costs or that they “weren’t equal” and didn’t need to be treated any better than cattle.

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Most of the time when you read books on the history of the United States, never do they talk about the “bad” things within the US. If they did, it would make us seem defective compared to other countries. Through the whole first chapter, Zinn explains that he’s going to talk about US history from the perspective of the victims in it’s becoming. He describes that it was more like an invasion than colonization by Europeans. However, I feel that Zinn was a little biased by leaving out certain points when he wrote about Columbus and his contribution to early American colonization. Zinn’s way of writing creates a vivid picture in your mind and with the facts used, you almost instantly see the faults in his expedition. What he doesn’t talk about, is how what he did wasn’t seen as unethical to most in this time period. The only given example in this chapter is from Las Casas who watched it happen on his plantation in Cuba. As society progressed, the result of Columbus’ expedition was contemplated, as was what used to be considered ethical or not.

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The rich, the poor, and the middle class are all important parts of American society. The rich increase taxes, give land to their friends, and have general sway of the government while the poor revolt against them and their laws. The middle class acts as a sort of buffer against the revolts. This worked fine until the rich got too greedy. People started to question the taxes and then just stopped paying them. People were arrested but when you're out numbered it's hard to enforce things, but is there really any society where the rich don't ultimately have the power?

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Balance was a word to describe making two opposite side equal. But the American dream is to improve one's life not help anyone else. These people didn't travel to give the opportunities to the poor, slaves, or women. The rich had the opportunity to make themselves even rich therefore they weren't going to balance the government. They were profiting off of the poor man's work, poor man's war, and poor man's land. It was the American dream come true, get rich and having their rights protected.

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Independence had many sides to it. Thomas Paine's Common Sense talked about Independence and soon after the Deceleration of Independence came out, but it was only for a select few. Minorities and women were excluded when it came to independence with slavery and wording such as "all men are created equal." People's culture certainly changes quite a lot from place to place. In the first chapter it talked about some of the Native American tribes that were very accepting of new people and respected women as a big part of their community, but despite their acceptance of the English they where still slaughtered. How did the English develop that way?

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What really struck out to me was paragraph starting with, "The use of the phrase "all men are created equal" was probably not a deliberate attempt to make a statement about women. It was just that women were beyond consideration as worthy of inclusion." Many argue that this phase was made to cut out women, even I thought of it that way. But I have a modern way thinking than from that time period. Women, along with other minorities were thought as possessions to the point where in human matters they weren't considered. The idea of how women and other minorities were thought as possessions is known to everyone but this puts it in another view. One would think of their chair when draft a bill about rights because it's so insignificant the thought of it would be a waste of time. This gives a clear and better explanation of how minorities were treated during this time period.

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As I was reading this, I realized this is a time period that is frequently gone over in US history classes but events like these are ignored and rarely talked about.Why is that? The struggle between the government and its people is nothing new. History repeats itself but not in the same way. The restriction of rights has been seen in so many different communities. For example, the voter ID has been considered a restriction of voting. Minorities are targeted with the voter ID as they would be with Berkeley's requirement of land ownership. When people think of the quote, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat," think events will happen the exact way. But as society modernizes so do ideas. No one will ask for land ownership as a requirement but changing it up to fit the time will happen if one ignores it. Also, the relationship between the masters and African slaves is every textbook, but what about the relationship between African slaves and Native American slave? Or masters and Native American slaves? Is all this to be assumed like the rest of history?

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Until I read this I had no idea that there used to be a law against black citizens going into 'Indian' territory. The extent the rich were willing to go in order to keep their power is incredible! If I had to live in that time I would have run away to live with the 'Indians' also! People where more divided then but in some ways I feel like politics hasn't changed much since then. Slavery doesn't exist anymore and voting rights aren't dependent on land but everything else is pretty similar.

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Again I'm not surprised to see that although it was the poor who fought and died for the revolution, it was the rich and white who ended up in control. Like most revolutions as I said before the Revolutionary War was used as an opportunity for the rich to make themselves more powerful. What could have been a true revolution that improved the lives of everyone was taken and perverted into another rich man's country.

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I'm unsurprised to learn that the American Revolution we know was just one group of revolutionaries that sought independence. Like many other revolutions the anger of the people was exploited by the middle class and lower end wealthy to give themselves more power.

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Many people did not know about how similar life was for poor whites and black slaves. Of course just by looking at how the poor were treated back in their home continent of Europe a person could figure that life wouldn't be much better in America. It does make me feel a bit better when it is shown that oppressed people in the world will always eventually rise up against their lot in life. Bacon's Rebellion is just one example of the countless rebellions of the poor against the rich through out history and the world.

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The early English settlement on North America proved far to hard for most people. In James town hundreds died for no reason other than a promise for a new life. I think the most interesting thing about English colonization is that despite their complete and total failure, they still continued to try. Because of their stubborn sense of divine right, that for, some reason, because they were more "civilized" than the natives. Not only did they kill natives in anger and themselves in failure they also decided to drag along thousands of Africans from a completely separate continent in a bid to take over a different people. I'm just surprised that because they couldn't destroy one society, they decided to destroy two instead.

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What struck me the most in this chapter wasn't how horrible a person Columbus and the other Conquistadors were, it was how the natives Columbus met lived such better lives than Europeans did. The Natives had care free lives where everything was shared peacefully with no ruler commanding them, instead every person worked together for their tribe no mater their sex. Compare that to the average Europeans life which was filled with force labor to work land that 2% of the population owned, where at any moment you could be conscripted to fight your kings war, and were forced to do all of that while barely living day to day. It strikes me that even though the Europeans saw that other way of life, instead of exploring it or even embracing it, they completely and utterly destroyed it. Because of their hunt for gold to give to the rich , they committed horrendous crimes without even batting an eye. It's sad to think that is how society evolved instead of the way that was crushed.

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Built by the Poor, Controlled by the Wealthy

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Built by the Poor, Controlled by the Wealthy

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It can be said that when the rich wage war, it's the poor who will die, and I now know that the Revolutionary War was no different. While there were technically a handful of rich men who served, they all served as officers and did little to no actual fighting while being paid much more than the common soldier (not to mention the fact that they were actually paid). Once the war was won, it was those same officers, as well as the wealthy political leaders of the Revolution, that wrote the Constitution for themselves. The minority rich of America created the document to govern the rest of the country, and since then the control has barely shifted. The average political body is still overwhelmingly made up of wealthy white men, the most successful of which come from long-standing political dynasties that have held office through multiple generations. The general population is responsible for electing people, yes, but once they're elected to office, the last thing they're actually worried about are common interest and rather what they can do to further solidify their own power.

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You would have never know about the average foot soilder in the war, just the generals like Washington. These people should be remembered for what they gave to create our nation and A People's History of The United States does just that. It remembers the Indian who died of Small Pox or the Indentured servant who was put to death for rebelling with his black counterparts. It gives perspective to the United States, a perspective that's is rarley seen.

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18 armed rebellions before the revolutionary war? This book continues to surprise me by showing that the revolutionary war wasn't a cut and dry beginning and end, but a continuous buildup untill the Constitution was written. This chapter also showed why the English wanted to keep it's colonies in America.

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Who knew land would be a major issue on literally a completely unexplored continent? You always think of the early colonists as going out and starting a farm on the open country, not having to squat on the land of the political elite to subsistence farm. This chapter also showed the growing political stratification between the land owning elites who could vote and those who could not.

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I never knew that slave owners lived in constant fear of slave revolt. Now seeing the early years if the United States from the enslaved people's points of view, I can see why they feared a revolt. It was also interesting to learn that slaves worked side by side with white indentured servants. I never knew life in early was so prone to upheaval.

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It will be interesting to read about the history of the United States from the perspective of the people who were on the bottom of society.  In this chapter we learned about Columbus from the Indians perspective and not from the Conquers. It was interesting to see how with just a small edge in technology the Europeans could dominate the continent.

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Revolution Won Thanks To Patriotic Fervor Or Hope Of Fortune?

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Revolution Won Thanks To Patriotic Fervor Or Hope Of Fortune?

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When reading through this chapter the most interesting piece of new information that stuck out to me was in the very beginning. Our education of the people involved in the revolutionary war mostly consisted of the Patriots and the Loyalists. Although as I read I realized that is not the full extent of the “groups” of people that had been involved. Howard Zinn had explained that John Adams had estimated that approximately a third were opposed, a third were in support and a third were neutral. With those new figures in my head, I really had to re-evaluate some of my thinking about the Revolutionary war. Furthermore, I continued reading and something else caught my attention. Now understanding that apparently only approximately a third were in support of the revolution I became aware that the first men in the militia were generally “respectability in their communities”. Then he continued on to explain that there were men that were actually excluded from the militia. That certainly is one thing that I never knew about. I was not aware that only a certain person would be able to join the militia. But only after desperation came to the revolutionists did they start allowing recruitment of the "less" respectable whites. Howard Zinn also explained in a sense that many of the working-class whites who did join the American militia didn’t join simply because of patriotic fervor. But in reality, many of them joined because they simply believed that serving in the military would bring them fortune. And for the longest time, I actually believed that at a time of revolution men had put aside their need and hunger for greed in order to benefit not themselves but their communities and country. Oh, how naive my thinking has been.

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This shows another side that is not often discussed in textbooks. Most of us are taught about Nat Turner and that is the most we know about slave rebellion. As taught by textbooks and media, slave accepted their fate. They would try to runaway or commit suicide but they would never rebel against their masters in another way. Also the reason why African where used for slaves instead of Native Americans was never included in a history reading or assignment. This is very insightful to the beginning because it goes t further on explain the actions of slave owners.

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Zinn made an interesting statement that the Constitution was wrote by wealthy men to benefit wealthy men and keep the middle class happy, but it forgot the poor whites, women, slaves, and Native Americans. The chapter makes you think that the lower class men who fought for the revolution had to wonder if it was worth it. They had fought one power for freedom to only have their freedoms limited by another power. Most of these men weren't paid for their services during the war and after faced the loss of their land. The rebellions that occurred are not mention or the laws that limited freedom of speech. Most accounts of history don't mention that only the men who owned land could vote and only wealthy held positions in government. Overall this chapter did a good job of telling the story of the lower class and the struggles they faced in the time after the revolution.

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Howard Zinn does a good job explaining how the want of rebellion from England started with the middle class. Zinn was right to include the need of the lower class for the rebellion to be successful, but they were still forced to be drafted in the army while the upper class could pay their way out. Really something that isn't talked about is how the middle class was looking for a way to gain power and keep the lower class below them. In reality the middle class was taking advantage of a poor lower class that had no interest in rebellion since their lives would remain the same no matter if the US was it's own country or still a British colony.

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How did the English way of thinking become so different from other countries? Where they really so scared of defiance that they needed to make laws against treating African slaves as humans? They survived long enough without having to resort to such inhuman measures, so what changed? Greed turns people into monsters! The descriptions of the slave ships made me sick. I am amazed how anyone can retain any amount of sanity after that kind of treatment. Some even managed to retain a bit of their culture that the slave owners worked so hard to destroy!

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I feel this chapter fit well with theme telling the story of the US through the eyes of forgotten groups of people. In this chapter that would first be the indentured servants. It is often forgotten that white indentured servants worked right along side slaves. While eventually they earned freedom the years they spent as servants weren't easy. I didn't know that they were sold in ways similar to slaves and families were often times split up. The next group that is usually forgotten is the people who lived on the frontier and had to be a buffer with the Native Americans. Rebellions among the poor were rising, and I feel that this is often times not taught. History likes to forgot the divisions between the poor and the wealthy. It was interesting to read about Bacon's Rebellion, with how Nathaniel Bacon was from a wealthier class, but hated the fact he had to be a buffer for the rich on the coast and the natives in the west. Once again that is something that was lost to history.

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I never know how fearful slave owners were of rebellion or how slave rebellions were not uncommon. It was interesting to read about how white servants would conspire with slaves to start rebellions. When learning about the early colonial history often times the important role slaves played in early history ia forgotten. Without the slaves to work in the tobacco fields of Virginia the early colonies could have very well failed.

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I found it refreshing to read about Columbus not as the hero, but as the man who caused mass genocide. In the US Columbus is often held as this hero who "discovered" America. It is often wrote off that caused the deaths of an entire group of people.The way Howard Zinn wants to tell history is a nice change from how it usually is taught. I enjoy that he wants to tell the story of the US from the forgotten classes and groups of people that really helped build this country.

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I have had the chance to create a project called, "Things You Didn't Learn in History Class," and a lot of that history was the history that made the US look bad and genocides. At a young age, we are taught Christopher Columbus came to America with three boats and the graphics are nice and innocent. But this also raises a question. Should have we been exposed to the cruelty of Columbus? At what age, should we learn about genocide? I had learned about genocide at a younger age, around elementary school age, because my brother older and I would read his textbooks. With my experiences in textbooks, Columbus's actions are justified or described in a very broad way. The Natives were living in a non "civilized" way and Columbus introduced them to a better way of living. Both "explorers" and Natives lived in peace and helped each other planting crops and civilizing the Natives to a more European lifestyle. This false story makes a great children's book but it's not true. Should we expose the cruel reality to elementary or should we continue with a much more peaceful lie?

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While I read through this chapter of the book I had a slight feeling of deja vu. I realized I had this slight feeling because most of what I was reading in this chapter, I have already begun to learn through all of my years of schooling so far.  Howard Zinn did a very nice job in explaining this very important part of our history. When recalling some of the topics briefly taught to me in my educational career about the Revolutionary War I did realize that he spoke about some topics that I had some previous knowledge of but more often than that he spoke about many crucially important events involving the American Revolution that I was unaware of. In my previous education on the American Revolution, most of that consists of events that happened during the declared war time. Not many events leading up to the Revolution are discussed and taught in a classroom setting.

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Having taken AP US Government last year, I was aware of the fact that the Revolutionary leaders were more made up of molders of public opinion such as Samuel Adams or James Madison as less made of people like George Washington, who we so idolize. I never really considered the fact, however, that by releasing pamphlets and the like to persuade people to join the Revolution also served to beat down other resistance groups that many of the Founding Fathers found unsavory purely because, being rich white men, they were as likely to be targeted in the name of equality. It goes to show that for all the preaching the Fathers and their Declaration of Independence has done, much of it amounts to the empty political rhetoric of many of today's prominent politicians. In both cases, those in power preach and promise to aid those less fortunate than them, but in the end only end up worrying about their own positioning and wealth.

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When learning about the colonization of North America and more specifically the becoming of the United States there are only a few events that our school teachers really have time to cover. Never once have I learned about Bacon’s Rebellion. And considering that his rebellion had become so threatening that the governor had to flee the burning capital of Jamestown and that England had to send a thousand soldiers to help maintain order. I would have figured that a historical event of this magnitude would have at least been skimmed in one of our many history lessons. Learning that most of the people who rose up against the Virginian government in 1676 were essentially poor only made more sense. Many of these people had come to the New World with the hopes of a fresh start. But it was revealed that was not the way it was meant to be for most. Howard Zinn explained that during the 18th century the distinctions between the rich and poor people had become only sharper. I was somewhat surprised to learn that wealthy Americans treated poor white workers as little better than slaves. Although it do not come as much of a surprise when white uprisings were starting to be discussed in the chapter. And then the governors had started to become nervous (one could put it that way) and thus they developed tactics and laws to weaken the working classes and to help prevent alliance forming between slaves and poor whites.

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In the beginning of chapter two, Howard Zinn explained that the Virginians needed unpaid labor to grow both products for export and for food for themselves so that they wouldn't perish. But the Virginians had realized that not enough white servants had been brought over to adequately farm and produce the amount of produce they needed. So, the Virginians had thought about forcing the Native Americans to work for them as Columbus had done, but they quickly realized that would not happen due to the Indians tough, resourceful, and defiant qualities. That thought is what brought them to decide on using enslaved people from Africa. Zinn had written, “by 1619, a million blacks had already been brought from Africa to South America and the Caribbean.” thus making it easier for the Europeans to justify the enslavement. I had not learned much about the beginning of Slavery and how it came to be in the United States, but while reading through this chapter I learned new information about the beginning of the need for slavery and how they justified it. And with gaining this new information I was able to better understand information that was given later in the chapter.

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The only type of history we learn in school is all the battles that are "big enough" to affect things. Many people tried to help out but will never be acknowledged for their work in this. The one man who was caught time after time still had a will to serve his country and help, why did we never learn about him in class when she showed immense amounts of dedication.

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Alexander Hamilton definitely played an important role in history and I feel was profoundly overlooked until recently when there was a musical made in honor of his accomplishments and importance in US history. I feel that Alexander Hamilton and the American revolution have a lot of similarities because of the fact neither of them are taught with much depth in our history classes. The chapters published by Zinn were very eye opening and I appreciated his well written knowledge for showing me parts of American History that I never had imagined could be true.

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In school we have never really been taught the background to how things led up to the war, we learned two "major events", which is all our teachers thought we should know. When the chapter talked briefly about the Declaration of Independence, it completely made sense that it was more written for white privileged men to ensure a nice rest of their life. Four days after the reading of the independence, when the draft was released, it all started to come together that white privilege was certainly a huge matter. Privileged whites could pay their way out of the military draft, while the poor were forced into it, all because they were not as successful as the white privileged men.

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The revolutionary war was a major part of U.S History and has been discussed in our social studies classes since elementary school. We had a preconceived idea of what it all meant, up until now. Like Roth Wells mentioned in his paragraph, we were taught of the Boston Tea Party, an act of rebellion that began the infamous war, but never really much else about it. It is of course possible that we did learn more information about the Revolutionary War at some point during our educational career, but unfortunately it didn't stick in our ever changing brains. Zinn, once again did a fantastic job of giving an explicit description of this crucial period of time in our nations history. He provided facts and knowledge that were previously unbeknownst to me. He provides evidence off subject matters that we were so briefly taught such as the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. Fortunately I was enrolled in our high school AP US Government class last semester and was able to receive a bit more information on.

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Reading this chapter it dawned on me that I have never once learned about this. Bacon's rebellion is an untold story. Poor people under the poverty line were coming together to try to overtake or overpower somehow the upper class with rich people. I find it very interesting that even after the leader of the group had been killed, they still continued on.

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I must agree with my fellow classmate Clarice Bergman in that I do not recall any lessons pertaining to the matters discussed in this chapter. It fascinates me that so much can be left out of our history lessons or even forgotten by people. Especially things of such importance and relevance in the process of shaping and molding our country into what it is today. People who were struck with poverty were being inspired by their leader to fight against the wealthy to create a livable life for themselves. Even after their leader died, they still fought on, and their is no doubt in my mind that they ever planned on giving up their fight until they succeeded.

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I personally, never realized that slavery was not "legal" for sometime before the 1800's. I never thought that slave owners would get punished (barely) for allowing a slave to escape, or something of that matter. In school, we were taught that slaves were property, used for any reason the owner needed. I also never knew that white slaves, were not allowed to interact with black slaves. When the eighty slaves escaped and started burning building and killing people, I was shocked that they had gotten so far, and when they were killed by the militia, not all of them perished. I always thought that slaves were known as property, treated like nothing, and were killed when owners no longer wanted them.

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" Is it possible for whites and blacks to live together without hatred?" A question that I have asked myself ever since I was old enough to understand racism and all that it entails. The knowledge that I collected from the passage leads me to believe that slavery was originally used as a survival mechanism. The whites were unaware of how to grow produce and do the necessary things to live, thus their bringing slaves in for help. Before slavery people were dying, if they weren't dying from hunger they were scrounging protein from the worst place imaginable, their fellow friends or family. Most commonly already dead and buried bodies, but it was not completely foreign to slay your wife's body and consume her to stop your own hunger and death. It was a horrific time in Jamestown and owning slaves was the answer to the peoples prayers. Although their need does not justify there actions by any means, it at least gives us a reason as to why the people thought treating other people as objects brought to us for comfort was acceptable. Although slavery has long been abolished now in 2017, we are still fighting the battle of racism. Whites have had the feeling of entitlement and superiority over any other race, especially blacks, since the beginning of time. No matter how many protests, how many rallys, how many movements occur, there will always be racism in our culture and in our history which absolutely breaks my heart, and I think Zinn did a swell job of highlighting the tragedies of slavery and how we may not have slavery anymore, but we sure do still have racism and it's a fight that we should never give up on.

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Reading this chapter changed my entire outlook on everything I have ever learned in a social studies class. In elementary, we were always taught he was a hero, discovered the land, but in all honestly, he was man with no heart. Learning this now, changes how I see things. Our "improved" lifestyle was built upon years of murder, slavery, and so many untold truths. Columbus is far off from a hero, his quests for gold turned into wanting slaves, murdering children for enjoyment, and killing million of men, women, and children. Saying he is a hero for what he has done is only covering up the sad truth that made the America''s, the United States.

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Columbus; The "hero" who led the genocide. 

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Columbus; The "hero" who led the genocide. 

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This chapter opened my mind to things in history I never knew of. Christopher Columbus left a legacy of heroism, since elementary school our teachers preached that he was this incredible man, a man who changed the history of our country, and although that is true, it's for a completely different reason. Christopher Columbus sounds nothing like a hero. He sounds like the type of man movie directors dream up for the horror movie story line. He led his successors into a mass genocide of innocent Indians because of his greed and desire for wealth and famed reputation back home. He was an ignorant man who was clearly selfish in every act that he committed. Starting with stealing the reward for spotting land from Rodrigo. Clearly Columbus is not a hero on the contrary to what we are teaching our young children in school. I mean there's a sweet little song about Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492, but conveniently we've left out the mass murdering, abduction of men, women, and children, and just plain cruelty that that this man encourage, led, and carried out.

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While reading the first chapter I almost started crying. The quotes and passages the author chose to describe the massacre and enslavement that was happening burned images into my mind that I will probably remember for the rest of my life. No matter how much I think about it and consider how this destruction "improved" civilization it still terrifies me to know that anyone can be heartless enough to nearly annihilate a people that have such a beautiful way of living. Saying Columbus is a hero after that kind of decimation is the most horrifying contradiction I have heard! I think that we would be far better off if we lived with the same ideals as the Native Americans.

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I think what I find most intriguing about this chapter is that I have no recollection whatsoever of learning anything about this particular time period (after the settlement of prominent towns but well before the Revolutionary War). Certainly I don't remember hearing anything about the apparently deep-seated fear of the rich and powerful that their deplorably treated servants and slaves would join forces with other miserably poor whites against their rich "masters." Knowing this now, it adds a whole other perspective to what exactly America was becoming as a country far before the Constitution ever existed. The fact of the matter is that even though slavery is abolished and racism far less persistent (although unfortunately still very present), the country's core hasn't much changed: the majority of the rich helping themselves to stay in power, while acknowledging the middle class only enough to appease it and pushing the poor further into poverty.

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While I read through the first chapter of Howard Zinn’s,“A People’s History of the United States”, I was astonished by the magnitude of the things that actually happened. Since we have been small children in elementary school Christopher Columbus has been made to look like a hero. For quite some time we certainly believed that he was the great explorer and adventurer that we had learned about in school. But as we grew older many of us began to realize how naive and bias those thoughts were. A majority of us soon made the discovery of what our teachers had never told us about our so called hero. We begin to understand the true nature of Christopher Columbus relations with the Native Americans in the Americas. We read about the horrible genocides that had been committed, and the inhuman was that the Native American people had been treated even after the help that they had provided to Christopher Columbus and his crew.

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I had never considered the fact that slavery in the Americas can be said to be the most cruel that has ever occurred, but at the same time, it's not very hard to believe. What I did find a bit surprising, however, was the fact that white men and women could be punished (however meaningless a punishment it might have been) for any sort of fraternization or intercourse with their slaves. I had always assumed that since slaves were treated as property, nobody cared if slaves were raped by their owners because, at the end of the day, the white man was superior and could do what he wanted with what he owned. I definitely didn't think that white indentured servants could also be punished for interacting with black slaves- I assumed that racism would have penetrated every level of white society and that they wouldn't have wanted to interact in the first place. Of course, even when these instances happened, the whites of the situation were let off far too easily when you consider the punishment the slaves were dealt. This most likely served to further deepen the divide between the two races in order to prevent them from uniting and overthrowing their rich, white owners.

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Never have I really come across a passage that so enforced the old saying "history is written by the victors" so much as this chapter. I had learned, far too late in my education, of the true acts of Columbus and other conquistadors, but they were mentioned in passing when compared to the amount of time spent idolizing Columbus's "discovery of the Americas." Even then, nobody really thought to try and view things through the eyes of the victims- the information of the massacres was presented coldly and without emotion, as if to say that genocide doesn't matter in the face of human progress. It really made me consider the fact that we, the American people, aren't true Americans- it's just a label the vast majority of us took on in order to present ourselves as a united nation with a common history and memory of the past, when really it couldn't be further from the truth.

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In a normal history class, the American Revolution is never taken into this depth of explanation. Most classes never explain the non-glorified moments of the war, only the gory battles and the beginning precedents of the US government.

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The events leading up to the American Revolution are never taught much. Yes, we learn about the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre but that's about it. The idea to be taught about the MOB as Samuel Adams called it would be a nice change to learning that he just got people and decided, "Hey, were the uh Sons of Liberty."

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At the beginning of the passage, Howard Zinn talks a lot about Bacon's Rebellion. Bacon was a man who decided to fight for the farmers on the outskirts of Jamestown due to the House of Burgess not taking action against local Native American raids. The more surprising thing about Bacon's rebellion is that even after their leader had been hanged, the rebellion continued on until they were disarmed. The more intresting rewrite to history would be, what if they had never been disarmed?

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This passage was quite different. Reflecting on how I've learned in the past about pre-1700 slavery, we never had talked about punishment of white slave owners. I was under the impression that whites of the time were never punished for a runaway slave or having children with their women slaves.

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I wasn't surprised so much as intrigued. I had learned through my own private reads about how Columbus and even other conquistadors were taking slaves and doing it all in the name of the magistrates. The more intriguing part is that Columbus was naive enough to think that the people he met were from Asia, when early explorers had detailed accounts of what the natives of Asia looked like.

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This first chapter surprised me so much. I remember when i was younger when we learned about Christopher Columbus, he was a hero. They only showed the positive sided of him, but not really the horrifying things he did.