A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 1492—PRESENT H O WA R D Z I N N To Noah, Georgia, Serena, Naushon, Will—and their generation Contents Cover Title Page Chapter – Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress Chapter – Drawing the Color Line Chapter – Persons of Mean and Vile Condition Chapter – Tyranny Is Tyranny Chapter – A Kind of Revolution Chapter – The Intimately Oppressed Chapter – As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs Chapter – We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God Chapter – Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom Chapter 10 – The Other Civil War Chapter 11 – Robber Barons and Rebels Chapter 12 – The Empire and The People Chapter 13 – The Socialist Challenge Chapter 14 – War is the Health of the State Chapter 15 – Self-Help in Hard Times Chapter 16 – A People’s War? Chapter 17 – “Or Does it Explode?” Chapter 18 – The Impossible Victory: Vietnam Chapter 19 – Surprises Chapter 20 – The Seventies: Under Control? Chapter 21 – Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus Chapter 22 – The Unreported Resistance Chapter 23 – The Coming Revolt of the Guards Chapter 24 – The Clinton Presidency Chapter 25 – The 2000 Election and the “War on Terrorism” Afterword Bibliography Index Acknowledgments About the Author Other Books by Howard Zinn Copyright About the Publisher Chapter Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island’s beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts He later wrote of this in his log: They brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells They willingly traded everything they owned They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features They not bear arms, and not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance They have no iron Their spears are made of cane They would make fine servants With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them whatever we want These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus Columbus wrote: As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold? He had persuaded the king and queen of Spain to finance an expedition to the lands, the wealth, he expected would be on the other side of the Atlantic—the Indies and Asia, gold and spices For, like other informed people of his time, he knew the world was round and he could sail west in order to get to the Far East Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, and Portugal Its population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the nobility, who were percent of the population and owned 95 percent of the land Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews, driven out the Moors Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything There was gold in Asia, it was thought, and certainly silks and spices, for Marco Polo and others had brought back marvelous things from their overland expeditions centuries before Now that the Turks had conquered Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routes to Asia, a sea route was needed Portuguese sailors were working their way around the southern tip of Africa Spain decided to gamble on a long sail across an unknown ocean In return for bringing back gold and spices, they promised Columbus 10 percent of the profits, governorship over new-found lands, and the fame that would go with a new title: Admiral of the Ocean Sea He was a merchant’s clerk from the Italian city of Genoa, part-time weaver (the son of a skilled weaver), and expert sailor He set out with three sailing ships, the largest of which was the Santa Maria, perhaps 100 feet long, and thirty-nine crew members Columbus would never have made it to Asia, which was thousands of miles farther away than he had calculated, imagining a smaller world He would have been doomed by that great expanse of sea But he was lucky One-fourth of the way there he came upon an unknown, uncharted land that lay between Europe and Asia—the Americas It was early October 1492, and thirty-three days since he and his crew had left the Canary Islands, off the Atlantic coast of Africa Now they saw branches and sticks floating in the water They saw flocks of birds These were signs of land Then, on October 12, a sailor called Rodrigo saw the early morning moon shining on white sands, and cried out It was an island in the Bahamas, the Caribbean sea The first man to sight land was supposed to get a yearly pension of 10,000 maravedis for life, but Rodrigo never got it Columbus claimed he had seen a light the evening before He got the reward So, approaching land, they were met by the Arawak Indians, who swam out to greet them The Arawaks lived in village communes, had a developed agriculture of corn, yams, cassava They could spin and weave, but they had no horses or work animals They had no iron, but they wore tiny gold ornaments in their ears This was to have enormous consequences: it led Columbus to take some of them aboard ship as prisoners because he insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold He then sailed to what is now Cuba, then to Hispaniola (the island which today consists of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) There, bits of visible gold in the rivers, and a gold mask presented to Columbus by a local Indian chief, led to wild visions of gold fields On Hispaniola, out of timbers from the Santa Maria, which had run aground, Columbus built a fort, the first European military base in the Western Hemisphere He called it Navidad (Christmas) and left thirty-nine crewmembers there, with instructions to find and store the gold He took more Indian prisoners and put them aboard his two remaining ships At one part of the island he got into a fight with Indians who refused to trade as many bows and arrows as he and his men wanted Two were run through with swords and bled to death Then the Nina and the Pinta set sail for the Azores and Spain When the weather turned cold, the Indian prisoners began to die Columbus’s report to the Court in Madrid was extravagant He insisted he had reached Asia (it was Cuba) and an island off the coast of China (Hispaniola) His descriptions were part fact, part fiction: Hispaniola is a miracle Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals The Indians, Columbus reported, “are so naïve and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it When you ask for something they have, they never say no To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone .” He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage “as much gold as they need and as many slaves as they ask.” He was full of religious talk: “Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities.” Because of Columbus’s exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men The aim was clear: slaves and gold They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives But as word spread of the Europeans’ intent they found more and more empty villages On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were “naked as the day they were born,” they showed “no more embarrassment than animals.” Columbus later wrote: “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.” But too many of the slaves died in captivity And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death The Indians had been given an impossible task The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left By 1550, there were five hundred A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island The chief source—and, on many matters the only source—of information about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolomé de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty Las Casas transcribed Columbus’s journal and, in his fifties, began a multivolume History of the Indies In it, he describes the Indians They are agile, he says, and can swim long distances, especially the women They are not completely peaceful, because they battle from time to time with other tribes, but their casualties seem small, and they fight when they are individually moved to so because of some grievance, not on the orders of captains or kings Women in Indian society were treated so well as to startle the Spaniards Las Casas describes sex relations: Marriage laws are non-existent: men and women alike choose their mates and leave them as they please, without offense, jealousy or anger They multiply in great abundance; pregnant women work to the last minute and give birth almost painlessly; up the next day, they bathe in the river and are as clean and healthy as before giving birth If they tire of their men, they give themselves abortions with herbs that force stillbirths, covering their shameful parts with leaves or cotton cloth; although on the whole, Indian men and women look upon total nakedness with as much casualness as we look upon a man’s head or at his hands The Indians, Las Casas says, have no religion, at least no temples They live in large communal bell-shaped buildings, housing up to 600 people at one time made of very strong wood and roofed with palm leaves They prize bird feathers of various colors, beads made of fishbones, and green and white stones with which they adorn their ears and lips, but they put no value on gold and other precious things They lack all manner of commerce, neither buying nor selling, and rely exclusively on their natural environment for maintenance They are extremely generous with their possessions and by the same token covet the possessions of their friends and expect the same degree of liberality In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length: Endless testimonies prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians Las Casas tells how the Spaniards “grew more conceited every day” and after a while refused to walk any distance They “rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry” or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays “In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings.” Total control led to total cruelty The Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” Las Casas tells how “two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.” The Indians’ attempts to defend themselves failed And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed So, Las Casas reports, “they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could turn for help.” He describes their work in the mines: mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside After each six or eight months’ work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides they ceased to procreate As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile was depopulated My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, “there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it .” Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas That beginning, when you read Las Casas—even if his figures are exaggerations (were there million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or million as others now believe?)—is conquest, slavery, death When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure— there is no bloodshed—and Columbus Day is a celebration Past the elementary and high schools, there are only occasional hints of something else Samuel Eliot Morison, the Harvard historian, was the most distinguished writer on Columbus, the author of a multivolume biography, and was himself a sailor who retraced Columbus’s route across the Atlantic In his popular book Christopher Columbus, Mariner, written in 1954, he tells about the enslavement and the killing: “The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.” That is on one page, buried halfway into the telling of a grand romance In the book’s last paragraph, Morison sums up his view of Columbus: He had his faults and his defects, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that made him great—his indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his own mission as the Christ-bearer to lands beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence despite neglect, poverty and discouragement But there was no flaw, no dark side to the most outstanding and essential of all his qualities—his seamanship One can lie outright about the past Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions Morison does neither He refuses to lie about Columbus He does not omit the story of mass murder; indeed he describes it with the harshest word one can use: genocide But he does something else—he mentions the truth quickly and goes on to other things more important to him Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which, when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it’s not that important—it should weigh very little in our final judgments; it should affect very little what we in the world It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must National Labor Relations Board, 401, 402, 574 National Labor Union, 240, 241–42 National Recovery Act (NRA), 392–93 National Resources Defense Council, 576 Native Americans see Indians, North American Navajo Indians, 529 Navasky, Victor, 454 Neblett, Carver, 455 Nelson, Gaylord, 553 Netherlands: exploration and colonization, 23, 26, 48, 211 slave trade, 28, 29 New Deal, 392–93, 395, 397, 403–04, 414, 417, 425, 649, 650 New Jersey: Colonial era, 51–52, 62, 81 labor, 230, 247 New Mexico, 149, 164, 169 Newton, Huey, 461 Newton, John, 27–28 New York: Colonial era, 35–36, 37, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 68, 83, 110 Indians, 54, 86–87, 130; see also Iroquois; Mohawk Indians landholding and tenants, 62, 63, 84, 85–86, 211, 212–14 New York City: Colonial era, 48–49, 50, 57, 60, 61–62, 67 blacks (1930s), 404 labor: 18th century, 50, 57, 99; 19th century, 117, 223, 224–25, 227–28, 234, 235, 240, 242–43, 251, 266, 267, 268, 270, 273, 278; 20th century, 324–27 poverty, 48–49, 60, 218, 240, 385, 647, 650 Niagara movement, 348, 349 Nicaragua, 298, 408, 567, 572, 585, 608 9/11 terrorist attacks, 677–82 Nixon, E D., 451 Nixon, Richard, 464, 526, 529, 575, 605, 633 Vietnam and Southeast Asia, 479, 483–84, 491, 497, 500, 501 see also Watergate Noriega, Manuel, 593–94 Norris, Frank, 322 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 658 North Carolina, 128, 200 Colonial era, 47, 50, 54, 63–65, 68, 71, 73, 82, 83 North, Oliver, 586, 587, 593 Novak, Robert, 498 Nowack, Marion, 429 nuclear energy, 566 armament and World War II, 9, 17, 422–24, 432, 434, 437, 441 protests against, 613, 667 Nunn, Sam, 587 Oakes, Richard, 528 Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), 575 Offner, Arnold, 409 Oglethorpe, James, 109 O’Hare, Kate Richards, 342, 343, 372 oil, 253, 256–57, 301 Cuba, 439, 440 Middle East, 413–14, 426, 439, 439, 549 Oliver, Andrew, 61 Oliver, Peter, 78 Olney, Richard, 279 Open Door Policy, 298, 408, 410, 413 Operation Desert Storm, 594–97 Operation Urgent Fury, 588 Organization of American States, 440 Osceola Indians, 145, 146 O’Sullivan, John, 151 Otis, James, 57, 60, 61, 66 Ottley, Roi, 404 Page, Thomas Nelson, 208 Paine, Robert Treat, 168 Paine, Thomas, 62, 69, 70, 111 Pal, Radhabinod, 411 Palestine, 414 Panama/Panama Canal, 408 U.S military invasion (1989), 593–94, 685 Pankhurst, Christabel, 512 Parker, Theodore, 156–57, 221 Parks, Rosa, 450–51 Parsons, Albert, 249, 268, 270, 271 Paterson, Matthew, 85 Patterson, Ben 290 Patton, George S., 391 peace dividend, 625 Pennsylvania: Colonial era, 57–58, 62, 70, 83 labor and strikes, 226, 230, 243–44, 247, 306 see also Philadelphia; Pittsburgh Pentagon Papers, 412, 461, 472, 473, 474, 476, 481, 488, 499, 500, 543, 566, 567 Peoples Party, see Populist party Pequot Indians 14–15 Perkins, George W., 350, 351 Perot, Ross, 643 Peru, 12 Pessen, Edward, 218, 222 Philadelphia, 88, 254 Colonial era, 49–50, 60, 70, 80, 111 labor, 221, 226, 233, 266 poor, 49–50, 218, 221 Philippines, 300 U.S and, 10, 312–20, 567 rebellions against 10, 313, 408, 429 Phillips, Kevin, 579–80, 582 Phillips, Ulrich, 34, 174–75, 176 Phillips, Wendell, 188, 189–90 Physicians for Social Responsibility, 603 Picasso, Pablo, 435 Pike, Douglas, 473 Pilgrims, 13, 21 “Pitcher, Molly,” 110 Pittsburgh: labor and strikes, 243–44, 246–48, 276–77, 294 Piven, Frances, 402, 457–58 Pizarro, 12, 17, 18 Plains Indians, 104 Plowshares Eight, 602 Poindexter, John, 587 Poland, 426, 592 “Political correctness,” 629 Polk, James, 150, 151–52, 158, 159, 411 Polk, Leonidas, 289, 290 Pollack, Norman, 293 Polo, Marco, “Pontiac’s Conspiracy,” 87 Popper, David, 554 Populist Party, 283, 286–95 passim, 301 Portugal, 2, 26, 27, 29 Powell, Colin, 593, 652 Powderly, Terence, 269 Powhatan, 12, 13 Pratt, Julius, 302 President, election of, 96 Prison conditions and reform, 119, 121, 124, 514–24 passim, 616, 646–47 convict labor, 209, 275, 292 Progressive period and reforms, 349–54 property, see land Prosser, Gabriel, 171 Puerto Rico, 32, 312, 408 Puritans, 14, 15–16, 17, 40 railroads, 205, 206, 207, 218, 219, 220, 227, 238, 239, 259, 261, 323 Cuba, 310 land acquired by, 220, 238, 239, 283 regulation, 349, 351 safety, 246, 255, 256, 278 unions and strikes, 235, 245–51, 260, 269, 270, 278, 279–81 see also transportation Ramusio, Giambattista, 26 Randolph, A Philip, 404, 458, 464 Randolph, Edmund, 68 Rankin, Jeannette, 371–72 Rantoul, Robert, 218 Rather, Dan, 598 Rawick, George, 177–78, 193 Reagan, Ronald, 564, 573–74, 577, 578, 580, 581, 611, 633, 645, 661 arms race and, 604 bombing of Libya, 591 budget cutbacks, 609–10 Grenada invasion, 588–89, 685 intervention in Central America, 585–87, 605–08 Record, George L., 374 Redding, J Saunders, 23 Reed, John, 373 Rehnquist, William, 574 religion: conflicts and controversies, 221, 226, 265 Constitutional guarantees, 83, 99 women, 108–09, 117, 118, 120 Remarque, Erich Maria, 360 Remini, Robert, 217 Reno, Janet, 645–46 Reston, James, 441, 442, 553 Revolutionary War, 50, 58–85, 492, 633 events leading to, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65–75 passim hostilities, 71, 85, 88 Indians, 77, 80, 87, 125, 126 Reynolds, Malvina, 537–38 Rhode Island: Colonial era, 14, 48, 54, 67, 91, 93 Dorr’s Rebellion, 214–16 labor, 230, 235, 241, 397 Rich, Adrienne, 512–13 Robeson, Paul, 448 Robinson, John, 20–21 Robinson, Patricia, 465, 508–9 Rockefeller, David, 465, 560, 561, 565 Rockefeller, John D., 242, 255, 256, 257, 258, 262, 356 Rockefeller, Nelson, 521 Rockefeller, William, 305 Rockefeller family, 301, 323, 351, 354–56, 464–65, 570 Rogin, Michael, 125, 128, 134 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 409, 415, 439, 631, 643 Middle East, 413–14 New Deal, 392–93, 395, 397, 403, 403–04, 414, 417, 425, 441 World War II, 410, 411, 412, 415, 416, 420 Roosevelt, Mrs Franklin D., 403 Roosevelt, James, 435 Roosevelt, Theodore, 208, 273, 297, 298, 300, 300, 301, 312, 341, 346, 347, 369 reform and big business, 349, 350, 351, 353 Root, Elihu, 273, 316, 351, 368 Romero, Archbishop Oscar, 590 Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel, 432–35 passim Rosengarten, Theodore, 397–98 Rositzke, Harry, 583 Rossi, Alice, 504 Rostow, Eugene V., 416 Ruffin, Josephine St Pierre, 193 Rumania, 426 Rusk, Dean, 298, 366, 476, 499 Russett, Bruce, 410, 411 Russia, 598, 657, see also Soviet Union Russian immigrants, 226, 265, 375, 382 Russo, Anthony, 470, 487, 488 Rwanda, 655 Ryan, Jack, 618 Ryan, Thomas Fortune, 305 Sacco and Vanzetti case, 376 Safe Water Drinking Act, 576 Sage, Russell, 207, 305 Salsedo, Andrea, 375–76 Sampson, Anthony, 413–14 Sanders, Bernie, 622 Sandinistas, 585, 593 Sandford, Mrs John, 112 Sanger, Margaret, 343 Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 166, 167–68 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 435 Sasway, Benjamin, 606 Saudi Arabia, 413–14, 623, 678, 681 Savak, 573 savings and loan scandal, 582–83 Schell, Jonathan, 477, 604 Schenck, Charles, 365–66 Schlesinger, Arthur, 130, 352, 441, 458 Schlesinger, James, 550, 552, 566, 619 “School of the Americas,” 569, 667 Schroeder, John, 152, 153, 158 Schutz, Carl, 301 Schwerner, Michael, 456 Scotch immigrants, 49 Scott, Dred, 187, 198 Scott, William, 78 Scott, Winfield, 10, 145, 147, 157, 166 Scottsboro Boys, 398, 444, 447 Seaton, Esta, 511 Seeger, Pete, 537 Seminole Indians, 127, 128, 129, 141, 143–46 Seminole War, 143–46 Senate, election of, 96, 349 Seneca Indians, 526; see also Iroquois Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War), 53, 59, 60, 61, 77, 87 Shah of Iran 572, 573 Shalom Stephen, 589, 591 Shattuci, Job, 92 Shaw, George Bernard, 271 Shaw, Irwin, 374 Shaw, Nate, 178–79, 397–98 Shays, Daniel, 93–94, 95 Shays’ Rebellion, 91–95, 98 Sherman, William T., 197 Sherman Anti-Trust act, 259–60, 351 Sherwin, Martin 422, 423, 424 Shy, John, 77, 78, 79 Simon, William, 558 Sinclair, Upton, 322, 365 Sioux Indians, 104, 524 Slater, Samuel, 115 slavery/slave trade, 12, 28–29, 30–31 abolitionists, 117, 120, 121, 122, 124, 155, 181–90 passim African states, 27–28 Colonial era, 23, 27–38 passim, 43, 46, 49, 50, 53–58 passim, 72, 103, 105–06; rebellions, 32–38 passim, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 72 Constitution, 13th Amendment, 192, 198, 204 Declaration of Independence 72–73 Dutch, 28, 29 18th century, 33, 58, 88, 89, 91, 98 English, 28, 29 French, 28 Indians, 3–7 passim, 32 19th century, 171–94; Fugitive Slave Act, 181, 186, 188; rebellions and conspiracies, 171, 174, 175, 183 passim, 194; see also Civil War Portuguese, 25, 29 Spanish, 3–7 passim, 25, 32 Smith, Abbot, 43, 45, 46–47, 53 Smith, Adam, 74 Smith, Henry Nash, 282 Smith, John, 13 Smith, Justin H., 158–59, 166–67 Smith, Ruby Doris, 453, 504 Smith, Sir Thomas, 24 Sobell, Morton, 434 Socialism/Socialist party, 264, 322, 330–50 passim, 352, 353, 359, 374, 558 and labor, 244–45, 249, 268–73, 278, 281, 282, 307–08, 336, 339–40, 382, 385, 406, 547 Spanish-American war, 307–08 World War I, 10, 359, 364–70, 372 World War II, 420 Social Security Act, 403 Somalia, 654–55 Somoza dictatorship, 572, 585 Sons of liberty, 66, 68, 71 Sorensen, Theodore, 546 Sorge, F A., 242 Sousa, Jerry, 518, 522 South Africa, 321, 430, 566, 568, 608 South Carolina, 141, 142, 199–200 Colonial era, 36, 47, 53–57 passim, 68, 73, 77, 82, 83 Soviet Union, 17, 426, 568, 613 Afghanistan invasion, 572, 604–05 Bolshevik Revolution, 373, 380, 409 cold war with U.S., 425, 429, 437, 448, 583–84 and Cuba, 440 disintegration of, 584, 591–92, 625, 638, 644, 651–52 immigrants returned to, by U.S., 375 labor leaders flee to, 373, 386 World War II, 407, 410, 411, 413, 423, 424 Spain, 2, 32 Civil War, 409, 420, 486 exploration and colonization, 1–5, 7–8, 9, 11–12, 14, 17–18, 25 and Cuba, 3, 5–7, 301, 302, 303, 304 Florida, 129 loss of Puerto Rico, Guam, and Philippines to U.S., 312 and Mexico, 11–12 and Peru, 12 slavery, 3–7 passim, 25, 32 Spanish American war, 10, 295, 300, 303–10, 312 Speckled Snake, 136 Spies, August, 270–71 Spock, Dr Benjamin, 618 Spotswood, Alexander, 34 Spring, Joel, 263 Spruill, Julia, 106, 109 Stalin, Joseph, 17, 592 Stamp Act of 1765, 61, 65, 66, 69, 71 Stampp, Kenneth, 31, 35 Standard Oil Company, 256–57, 260, 301, 323 Stanford, Leland, 262 Stans, Maurice, 544, 547 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 119, 122 Star Wars program, 584 steel, 253, 257, 258, 276–77, 294, 310, 324, 363, 380–81, 401, 408 Steele, James, 580 Steffens, Lincoln, 323 Stein, Herbert, 575 Steinbeck, John, 389 Steiner, Stan, 533 Steinke, Richard, 492–93 Stillman, James, 323, 351 Stockwell, John, 617 Stone, I F., 553 Stone, Lucy, 119 Stout, Linda, 614 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 453, 454, 455, 459, 485 Sudan, 659, 678 suffrage, see voting Sulzberger, C L., 501, 551 Sununu, John, 595 Supreme Court, 141, 216, 260–61, 596, 645 on abortion, 510, 574, 616 appointment of, 96, 260 business and economic interests protected by, 260–62 and civil rights, 187, 198, 204, 205, 450, 451 on Communist party, 435 election of 2000 and, 677 on free speech, 366 Indians, rights of, 526 on Japanese-American evacuation, 416 NRA declared unconstitutional, 393 on Pentagon Papers, 488 on prison conditions, 523 on school desegregation, 582 on sit-downs, 402 Vietnam war, constitutionality of, 476, 498 on White House tapes, 547 Swan, E S., 328 Swift, Gustavus, 254 Taft, William Howard, 347, 349, 350 “talk radio,” 564 Tanzania, 659, 678, 682 Tarbell, Ida, 323 tariffs, 91, 101, 130, 141, 142, 189, 206, 238, 257 Tatum, Georgia Lee, 237 taxation: Colonial era, 39, 40, 41, 48, 52, 61, 63, 66, 71, 72 Stamp Act, 61, 65, 66, 69, 71 18th century, 83–84, 91, 100, 101 income, 260, 349, 384, 580–81 Taylor, Frederick W., 324 Taylor, Maxwell, 475 Taylor, Zachary, 150, 151, 152, 153, 160, 164, 165 Tecumseh, 127, 132–33 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 393, 403 Terkel, Studs, 390, 391, 394 terrorism, 591, 649 “war on .,” 678–82 Texas: annexation and boundary dispute, 149, 150, 159, 169 textile mills, 243–44, 253, 300, 334–37, 346, 381, 385, 386, 397 Thomas, Clarence, 574 Thoreau, Henry David, 156 Thorpe, Grace, 528 Three Mile Island, 613 Tiffany, Charles, 207 Tikas, Lou, 355 Tilimon, Johnnie, 513–14 tobacco, 24, 171, 254, 260, 283, 301, 310 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 218 Todd, John, 120 Tragle, Henry, 174 transportation, 125, 218, 219, 239, 283 segregation, 450, 450–51, 453 see also railroads Trilateral Commission, 558, 560–61, 566 Trollope, Frances, 116 Trotter, William Monroe, 348 Truman, Harry, 425, 426, 434–35, 438, 470, 473, 560, 583 civil fights, 448–49 Korean war, 427, 428, 438, 685 security Program and anti-Communism, 428, 430, 432, 435, 436 World War II, 17, 412, 422, 423–24 Truman Doctrine, 426–27, 429 Trumbo, Dalton, 374, 496–97 Truth, Sojourner, 124, 184–85, 193, 202 Tubman, Harriet, 175, 185, 193 Tumulty, Joseph, 374–75 Turkey, 426, 429, 551, 656 Turner, Henry MacNeal, 200 Turner, Nat, 171, 174, 185 Twain, Mark, 316, 321 Tyler John, 215 unemployment, 557–58, 570, 578, 650 unions, see labor organization United Fruit Company, 439, 508 United Mine Workers, 307, 330, 354, 355 United Nations, 415, 427, 470, 653–55 U.S Steel, 257, 331, 350, 363, 381 Van Buren, Martin, 130, 146, 148, 217, 224 Vandenberg, Arthur, 415 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 262 Vanderbilt family, 242 Van Every, Dale, 135–36, 137, 138–39, 142, 143, 146 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 376 Vesco, Robert, 544, 547 Vesey, Denmark, 171, 173–74 Vietnam/Vietnam war, 9, 366–67, 411, 469, 472–501, 542, 549–54, 556, 558, 563, 618, 618–19, 631, 652 opposition to, 461, 484–94, 500–01, 516, 518, 523, 541, 542, 554, 567 Pentagon Papers, 412, 470, 472, 473, 474, 476, 481, 488, 499, 500 War Powers Act, 588 Vincent, Henry, 286 Vinson, Fred, 434, 435 Virginia (Colonial era), 12, 13, 18, 25, 41–47 passim, 50, 55, 56, 68, 78, 82, 84, 86 Bacon’s Rebellion, 37, 39–42, 45, 54, 55, 59 House of Burgesses, birth of, 43 slavery, 25, 30, 32–38 passim, 47, 72 see also Jamestown Vogel, Virgil, 15 voting: blacks, 65, 88–89, 198, 199, 203, 207, 291, 449, 454–55, 456, 458, 459, 461, 465–66, 610 Constitution, 96 15th Amendment, 198, 449 Indians, 65, 96 low voter turnout, 563 1960s and 1970s, 562 property qualifications, 49, 65, 83, 96, 214–16, 291 women, 65, 96, 110, 114, 123, 342, 343, 344–45, 384, 503 see also civil rights/civil rights movement Wadsworth, James, 359 Wake Island, 312 Walker, Charles R., 394 Walker, David, 180, 184 Walker, Margaret, 446 Wall, John, 618 Wallace, Henry, 428, 449 Wampanoag Indians, 15–16, 40 War of 1812, 127 War on Poverty, 601 War Powers Act, 553, 588 War Resister’s League, 437 Washburn, Wilcomb, 40 Washington, Booker T., 208, 209, 348 Washington, George, 85, 91, 95, 97, 125, 126 Revolutionary War, 79–80, 81, 82, 145 Washington, Mrs George (Martha), 110 Watergate, 488, 542–49 passim, 554, 558, 631 Watergate scandal, 563, 618 Watson, Tom, 291–92 Wayland, Francis, 156 Wayne, Anthony, 81, 87 wealth distribution, 571, 612, 629, 662–64, 668 Weatherby, William, 404 Weaver, James, 289 Webster, Daniel, 142, 145, 181, 216 Weems, John, 162, 166, 167 Weil, Simone, 420 Weinberger, Caspar, 584, 585, 605 Wiener, Jon, 595 Weinstein, James, 351, 353, 365 welfare, attack on, 578–79, 647–50 Welles, Sumner, 412 Welter, Barbara, 112 West Germany, 591 Westmoreland, William, 500, 550 Wheeler, Burton, 385 White, Walter, 419 Whitman, Walt, 154 Wicker, Tom, 521, 566 Wiebe, Robert, 350 Willard, Emma, 117–18 Williams, Roger, 16–17 Williams, William Applernan, 301–02 Wilson, Charles E., 425 Wilson, Darryl B., 530 Wilson, Edmund, 237–38 Wilson, James, 70, 80 Wilson, James Q., 587 Wilson, Woodrow, 347, 349, 350, 356, 362, 381 World War I, 361, 362, 364, 365 Winthrop, John, 13, 14, 48, 108–09 Winthrop, Robert, 158 Witt, Shirley Hill, 533 Wittner, Lawrence, 419, 425 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 111 women: abolitionists, 117, 120, 121, 122, 124 abortion, 509–10, 511 blacks, 32, 103, 105–06, 184–85, 193, 202, 347, 504 change in status, 503–14 Colonial Era, 43, 44, 49, 72, 73, 102, 104–11 passim Declaration of Independence and Constitution, 72, 73, 96, 102 education, 110, 115, 118, 123, 509 exploitation and oppression, 9, 103–24 passim feminist movements: 19th century, 117, 119–23 passim, 184–85, 202; early 20th century, 342–46, 349; 1960s and 1970s, 504–14; 1980s and 1990s, 616 Indians, 5, 7, 19, 20, 104 in antinuclear movement, 603 labor, 10, 32, 43, 44, 103, 104–05, 110, 111, 114–15, 123, 228–31, 234–35, 240–41, 253, 257, 267–68, 324–27 passim, 336, 338–39, 347, 406, 504, 506–11 passim; see also labor, factory and mill system property ownership denied, 114, 123 rape, 510, 511 socialists, 341–46 passim voting, 65, 96, 110, 114, 123, 342, 343, 344–45, 384, 503 World War II, 416 Wood, Leonard, 311, 312 Woodford, Stewart, 304 Woodward, C Vann, 205, 206, 274–75, 292 Woodward, Carl, 545 Worcester, Samuel, 141 Workingmen’s party, 244–45, 248–49 World Bank, 566, 658, 674 World Trade Organization (WTO), 672–74 World War I, 10, 359–74, 376, 418, 492 World War II, 10, 407–25 passim, 492 Germany and Japan, bombing of, 9, 17, 421–23, 481 and labor, 402, 407, 415, 416, 417–18, 504 Wright, Frances, 121–22, 221 Wright, Margaret, 465 Wright, Richard, 446–47 Yeltsin, Boris, 657 Young, Andrew, 554, 566 Young, Marilyn, 300, 625 Young, Thomas, 62 Yugoslavia, 426, 660–61 Zuñi Indians, 19, 104 Acknowledgments To my two editors, for their incalculable help: Cynthia Merman of Harper & Row, and Roslyn Zinn To Hugh Van Dusen, of HarperCollins, for wonderful help and support throughout the history of this book To Rick Balkin, my tirelessly attentive agent and friend To Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation, for the passage from Ila Abernathy’s poem To Dodd, Mead & Company, for the passage from “We Wear the Mask” from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar To Harper & Row, for “Incident” from On These I Stand by Countee Cullen Copyright 1925 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.; renewed 1953 by Ida M Cullen To Alfred A Knopf, Inc., for the passage from “I, Too” from Selected Poems of Langston Hughes To The New Trail, 1953 School Yearbook of the Phoenix Indian School, Phoenix, Arizona, for the poem “It Is Not!” To Random House, Inc., for the passage from “Lenox Avenue Mural” from The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Time by Langston Hughes To Esta Seaton, for her poem “Her Life,” which first appeared in The Ethnic American Woman by Edith Blicksilver, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1978 To Warner Bros., for the excerpt from “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” Lyric by Jay Gomey, Music by E Y Harburg © 1932 Warner Bros Inc Copyright Renewed All Rights Reserved Used By Permission About the Author HOWARD ZINN is a historian, playwright, and social activist He lives with his wife, painter Roslyn Zinn, in Auburndale, Massachusetts Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author Other Books by Howard Zinn La Guardia in Congress 1959 The Southern Mystique 1964 SNCC: The New Abolitionists 1964 New Deal Thought (editor) 1965 Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal 1967 Disobedience and Democracy 1968 The Politics of History 1970 The Pentagon Papers: Critical Essays 1972 (editor, with Noam Chomsky) Postwar America 1973 Justice in Everyday Life (editor) 1974 Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian 1993 You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train 1994 The Zinn Reader 1997 The Future of History 1999 Marx in Soho: A Play on History 1999 On War 2001 On History 2001 Terrorism and War 2002 Emma: A Play 2002 1991 Copyright A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES Copyright © 1980, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2003 by Howard Zinn All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request ISBN-10: 0-06-083865-5 (pbk.) ISBN-13: 978-0-06-083865-2 (pbk.) EPub Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780061989734 05 06 07 08 09 /RRD 10 About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au Canada HarperCollins Canada Bloor Street East - 20th Floor Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O Box Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com ... in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare That, being as blunt as I can, is my approach to the history of the United States The reader may as... uncharted land that lay between Europe and Asia the Americas It was early October 1492, and thirty-three days since he and his crew had left the Canary Islands, off the Atlantic coast of Africa... viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen