The Struggle Between Elitism and Democracy in Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary America, Part 2

Make sure you review Chapter Seven in The Many-Headed Hydra. Bring MHH and your copy of Fresia, Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and other Illusions, to class with you.

For last class you read:

• an essay by Charles Beard;

• Sterling North, review of Howard Fast, The Proud and the Free, from the New York World Telegram & Sun October 9, 1950, page 22.

• Howard Fast, "Reply to Critics," Masses & Mainstream, December1950.

Let's continue to consider the question of the American Revolution from a class perspective --  who benefitted, materially and financially, from the American Revolution --  and the class conflicts within the American Revolution, by considering the question of slavery. Slaves were working people, who were forced to labor under the worst conditions possible.

Read about Gabriel's Revolt, in Virginia, in 1800, from these two sources:

• Excerpts from Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts.
• This article by reporter Susan DeFord in The Washington Post, February 6, 2000, entitled "How did those icons of liberty, James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson, reward this man who risked all to battle tyranny in the name of freedom? They hanged him."

Please study these two documents. Then write 300-350  words on the issue of conflicts of interest and class conflict, freedom and "liberty".