Scott Wilson

“Revolutionary America may have been a middle-class society, happier and more prosperous than any other in its time, but it contained a large and growing number of fairly poor people, and many of them did much of the actual fighting and suffering between 1775 and 1783: A very old story.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

“The first large-scale revolt in the North American colonies took place in New York in 1712. In New York, slaves were 10 percent of the population, the highest proportion in the northern states, where economic conditions usually did not require large numbers of field slaves.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

“Here was the traditional device by which those in charge of any social order mobilize and discipline a recalcitrant population—offering the adventure and rewards of military service to get poor people to fight for a cause they may not see clearly as their own.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

“The leaders of early Boston were gentlemen of considerable wealth who, in association with the clergy, eagerly sought to preserve in America the social arrangements of the Mother Country.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present