Persons of Mean and Vile Condition
The chapter starts out by describing Bacon’s Rebellion, using it as an example of unrest between social classes in the late 1600’s. While the rebellion isn’t described in great detail, it describes how slaves and servants joined together behind Bacon to fight what they considered a common enemy, the white upper class. After Bacon’s death, the rebellion didn’t last long, and a man named Thomas Grantham used “force and deception to disarm the last rebel forces”. When the rebellion ends, the servants who stood behind Bacon became part of the underclass, a group of poor whites, and many were indentured to go to America. The conditions on the voyage were horrendous, paralleling those on ships transporting slaves. Once they arrived, the servants were treated as slaves; beaten, whipped, and given hardly any rights. The upper class gained all the benefits and dominated the political world in America. This unfair treatment between social classes caused several uprisings, and then the Indians began to show hostility, posing more problems. The new concern was whether the lower class would join forces with the Indians and unite against the upper class white people, which would be a serious threat, just like in Bacon’s Rebellion. By the late 1700’s, this problem was solved by buying the loyalty of the lower classes with liberty and equality.
Persons of Mean and Vile Condition
The chapter starts out by describing Bacon’s Rebellion, using it as an example of unrest between social classes in the late 1600’s. While the rebellion isn’t described in great detail, it describes how slaves and servants joined together behind Bacon to fight what they considered a common enemy, the white upper class. After Bacon’s death, the rebellion didn’t last long, and a man named Thomas Grantham used “force and deception to disarm the last rebel forces”. When the rebellion ends, the servants who stood behind Bacon became part of the underclass, a group of poor whites, and many were indentured to go to America. The conditions on the voyage were horrendous, paralleling those on ships transporting slaves. Once they arrived, the servants were treated as slaves; beaten, whipped, and given hardly any rights. The upper class gained all the benefits and dominated the political world in America. This unfair treatment between social classes caused several uprisings, and then the Indians began to show hostility, posing more problems. The new concern was whether the lower class would join forces with the Indians and unite against the upper class white people, which would be a serious threat, just like in Bacon’s Rebellion. By the late 1700’s, this problem was solved by buying the loyalty of the lower classes with liberty and equality.
