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Summary Of Howard Zinn And The American Pageant

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Arguably one of the most important parts of US history is the American Revolution. Without the revolution there would be no United States because it never would have broke apart from Britain. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States, and David Kennedy’s The American Pageant both discuss the American Revolution. When describing the revolution, Zinn chooses to describe the different points of view of the everyday people in the colonies and the people in charge, while Kennedy describes the colonists as all having one perspective. The result is that Zinn paints a more full picture of the events including the first protests, the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party. The first example of the differences in the descriptions of the colonists points of view between Zinn and Kennedy takes place when they explain the events leading up to the revolution. They both describe the Stamp Act as one of the first sources of unrest in the colonies. When describing the protests against the act, Zinn says, “In Boston, the economic grievances of the lowest classes mingled with anger against the British and exploded in mob violence. The leaders of the Independence movement wanted to use that mob energy against England” (Zinn, 65). He makes a distinction between the poor and the rich and their attitudes. The poor were angry about economic inequality as well as what England was doing, but the leaders of the revolution, the rich, wanted them to focus their anger on
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