A People's History of the United States

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1980

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-20

Chapters 21-25

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 6 Summary

The next chapter returns to the 18th century. Zinn refocuses his narrative on colonial women who, he thinks, have been frequently left out of traditional histories of the revolution. Women across America were oppressed to varying degrees. Contact with Europeans unraveled many parts of Native American society, including pre-contact gender attitudes. African women also suffered in proportion to their status as both women and slaves (105). But even white women were forced to the bottom of a gender hierarchy that controlled and punished them. For colonial Americans, the view that women were inferior to men came largely from a literal reading of the Bible (108). Despite this, many resisted the roles into which they were forced. Before the revolution, many women fought for greater access to education and the freedom to interpret the Bible for themselves (109).

For Zinn, the revolution was a turning point for American women. Starting in the 1770s, organizations like the Daughters of the American Revolution worked to unite and organize American women in support of the cause. Women like Molly Pitcher took part in battles. And the wives of many leading revolutionaries like Abigail Adams worked diligently to support their husbands. Of course, the revolution did not produce true equality for women. But the war did produce a consciousness of women’s issues. Thomas Paine, for example, became a strong advocate for gender equality (111). In the 1840s, women become prominent in the movement to develop a modern health system (117). By 1849, the first women were enrolling in American universities (118). Women also were important activists in the anti-slavery movement. Several women traveled to London in 1840 to participate World Anti-Slavery Society Convention. When the male delegates voted to exclude the American women, their leaders returned with a newfound sense that the struggle for racial equality and the struggle for gender equality were interrelated (122). Many of these women met in Seneca Falls, New York, where they signed a “Declaration of Principles” and created the American suffrage movement.

Despite this seeming progress, many men and women pushed for the preservation and restoration of traditional gender roles. Women were taught that their place remained at home in the “women’s sphere” (124). Literature written for daughters and young women further told them that the very air of the outside world could be toxic and dangerous to them and that it was better to remain physically and spiritually protected by their fathers and husbands. These beliefs were hard to break. Despite the work of women like Elizabeth Caddy Stanton and Sojourner Truth, many American women remained exploited and controlled in a male-dominated society.

Chapter 7 Summary

The next chapter pivots to the oppression of another group, Native Americas, who unlike other minority groups were not considered part of the cultural melting pot. Prior to the revolution, the British had maintained a firm limit to western expansion. In 1803, however, Jefferson acquired the Louisiana territories from France, nearly doubling the size of the United States (126). The purchase of these lands sharpened longstanding animosities between settlers and native people on both sides of the frontier. This tension would provoke a series of wars in the 1810s and 1820s. These wars made Andrew Jackson, already popular for his role in the war against the British, a household name across the US. Jackson’s tactics were popular amongst most white people in the warzones. He would protect settlers with federal troops when the settlers encroached on native lands. If native people resisted, Jackson would have grounds to evict them. If local tribes tried to negotiate instead, Jackson would tell them the only solution was to carve up large tracts into smaller plots and then sell the settlers that territory at a steep discount (129).

This policy reached a crescendo after Jackson was elected president in 1828. The native tribes were vulnerable to a new wave of evictions. When gold was discovered in Georgia in 1829, states across the South pushed to evict native landowners and open the territories up to speculation (134). It did not matter that Jackson had helped give these native groups title to the land during the previous negotiations. His administration authorized the use of military force to facilitate evictions. Compounding matters, the winters of 1830 and 1831 were some of the coldest on record. The subsequent humanitarian catastrophe, known as the Trail of Tears, removed almost all Indigenous groups from the Southeast. While the policy was controversial at the time (the removal bill passed Congress by the slim margin of 102-97 and was widely decried in the North), it bought Jackson overwhelming support in Southern states (138). He would go on to win reelection by a margin of almost 150,000 votes or about 10% of the electorate (141).

Chapter 8 Summary

US expansion after the Louisiana Purchase next moved towards Mexico, which had gained its freedom from Spain in 1821. At this time, Mexico stretched north into what is today California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. But in 1836, American settlers in Texas pushed for independence for the ‘Lone Star Republic’ (149). After Texas won its war with Mexico, American policy shifted towards annexing not just Texas but all the Mexican territory between the existing border and the Pacific. In 1845, newspaper editor John O’Sullivan declared this “our manifest destiny” (151). In that same year, James Polk and Congress annexed the Republic of Texas, adding its territory to the United States. Importantly, the annexed territories included all those claimed by the Republic of Texas including land north of the Rio Grande currently controlled by Mexico. The US Army, under command of Zachary Taylor, moved into the disputed territories. Within weeks US soldiers had been killed by Mexican guerrillas and had attacked the Mexican army in turn. By May of 1846. Congress had declared war (154).

There was some resistance to the war in Congress, including from newly elected Illinois senator Abraham Lincoln, but Congress overwhelmingly supported the declaration of war and voted for additional war funds. As the war went on, however, resistance grew. On hearing the news of the invasion of Mexico, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his Massachusetts taxes. He was imprisoned for a night before his friends, without his consent, paid the fine. In Ohio, a congressman spoke out against the war on the grounds it would cause Americans to “mingle” with the inferior people then living in Mexico (157). The elite criticisms of the war were paired with growing popular resentment. Working-class people were coerced to join both the regular army and state militias. Despite this agitation, the US Army was able to win several key battles, especially at Vera Cruz where US troops quickly and bloodily drove back Mexican forces and opened the door for the invasion of central Mexico. By September 1847, the army captured Mexico City and forced the Mexican legislature to agree to a treaty ceding all the territories north of the Rio Grande, including California and the desert lands between the coast and Texas, in exchange for a payment of $15 million (169).

Chapters 6-8 Analysis

These three chapters focus on people who helped the US expand across North America but who are traditionally ignored in the colonial and post-colonial histories. Women worked both in cities and along the frontier doing necessary labor to support society. Yet, during the colonial period, they were completely excluded from participating in politics. After the revolution, women’s organizations pushed for a greater role in American politics. Yet, many women remained excluded from real power. In the case of anti-slavery activists like Elizabeth Caddy Stanton, exclusion from true participation in the abolition movement pushed them to form the American women’s suffrage movement, which worked for voting rights and equal treatment for women.

While American women organized for equality, Native American men and women were targeted for persecution as the US expanded its territorial holdings. Native Americans after the revolution became a captive population whose land could be taken and resold for considerable profit and without substantial repercussion. In many cases, native peoples fought to defend their land; in others, they tried to adopt European notions of property rights. But neither tactic was successful in stopping the theft of native territories. In 1846, Mexico, recently independent from Spain, became the next target for American expansion. In two short, bloody years the United States conquered one-third of Mexico’s territory. In 1848, as the peace agreement was being imposed on the Mexican government, gold was discovered in the mountains of California. In all cases, America was built on the backs of people outside the elite.