Power Struggle in the New World

How did the elite stay on top in the New World?

By the 1700s, the New World was no longer the land of equality that it had promised to be but was divided by strict class lines. In 1770, the top 1% of property owners in Boston owned 44% of the wealth. Additionally 29% of Boston males were extremely poor, lacked property and thus had a loss of voting rights. This huge division between the poor and rich caused early strikes and riots to begin. For example, during the 1713 food shortage in Boston, a rich merchant, Andrew Belcher, was exporting corn outside of the US to reap a greater profit while the poor were starving. On May 19, 200 people rioted and attacked his ships, searching for food. Thus showing how the poor began to view the rich as oppressive and started to rebel against them. 

The wealthy elite began to develop various fears regarding the unruliness of the lower class, as the social inequality gap widened and the threat of conflict increased. This was compounded by increasing number of slaves which was increasing the prospect of a slave rebellion and the issue of Indian hostility. The elite’s greatest fear was that all the oppressed groups would combine and overthrow them. In Georgia and South Carolina, there was the sexual mixing of whites and Indians. Additionally, many whites would join Indian tribes or be captured and choose to remain in them. This threat was mitigated through the elite’s push for expansionism which the majority of all the citizens supported. They also solved the issue of the blacks and Indians uniting through treaties requiring the return of slaves, harsh slave codes and bribes. 

The most dangerous prospect for white planters; however, was the union of poor whites and blacks. The act that contributed most to this fear was Bacon’s Rebellion, as the elite in Virginia witnessed 400 black slaves and white servants join forces. After Bacon’s Rebellion, the Virginian Assembly chose to give amnesty to the white servants but not to blacks, thus solidifying the status difference between whites and blacks.  The elite began to see the best way to separate poor whites and blacks as racism, which could be used as a device of control to subdue the poor whites.  

Edmund Morgan’s book, "American Slavery, American Freedom”, describes how white indentured servants and blacks, despite their different skin colors; “initially saw each other as sharing the same predicament”, for example they would “run away together, steal hogs together, get drunk together”  and “made love”. The elite started to pass laws to encourage racism such as severe laws outlawing interracial marriage and additional laws discouraging the fraternization of slaves and poor whites. Mixed off-spring continued to be produced through interracial sexual relations despite the laws preventing interracial marriage. This issue was solved through the elite declaring these children illegitimate and thus keeping the population in charge white. 

An additional buffer was the emerging middle class which cultivated the support of the white elite. The middle class supported the elite as they passed laws which protected them from the economic competition of blacks. For example, in 1764, South Carolina passed legislation prohibiting Charleston masters from employing blacks. 

Overall, the upper class stayed on top by appealing to the middle class and taking actions to prevent the unification and rebellion of the oppressed; the slaves, Indians and poor whites. 

Sources:

Morgan, Edmund Sears. American Slavery, American Freedom. W.W. Norton, 2003.

Zinn, Howard, and Anthony Arnove. A People's History of the United States. Harper, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2017.