Zinn Chapter 5

In chapter five of “A people history of United State” Zinn addresses the issue of the Revolutionary War. Like in the entire book, Zinn focalizes his reflections on the situation of the underclass. In this chapter the narration is around two topics: how the underclass lived the war and the formation of a first sketch of constitution.

Zinn starts the chapter talking about the difficulties that Americans found in the formation of military troops. In the beginning only white free men were allowed to take part in the militia. Natives, slaves and poor whites didn’t use to fight. But this strategy wasn’t successful and soon Americans needed more men. So they let the poorest classes to fight, too, and sometimes they forced people to go to the war by special laws. Poor didn’t oppose to that because they saw in their participation to the fight a way to get their conditions better. But it wasn’t in that way. When after the war poor came back to their home their situation wasn’t improved but got worse. Missing work, which they couldn’t do to fight the war, had made their business bad and they didn’t succeed, during the war, to solve the arguments they have with the people of the wealthy class.

Zinn also talks, in chapter 5, about a new sketch of constitution that was made during the war. This wasn’t very different from the previous laws because only wealthy white people made it, caring mostly about their businesses.