What is the main argument about class in chapter 3?

Chapter three of A People's History of the United States addresses the inequalities that lay at the heart of seventeenth-century American society. These class inequalities, as Zinn shows, emerged with violent force in Bacon's Rebellion of 1676. The title of the chapter, "Persons of Mean and Vile Condition," refers specifically to the indentured servants who embraced the rebellion in Virginia. The incident was especially frightening to elites because it raised the specter of interracial cooperation between poor whites (indentured servants and former indentured servants) and African Americans. In most colonies, these elites sought to govern these unruly people through a number of strategies, the most important being cultivating the support of what was then called "the middling sort." These artisans, merchants, independent farmers, and others were courted by elites who could "make concessions. . . without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expense of slaves, Indians, and poor whites" (58). "Middling" whites were enlisted in the media, granted the right to vote, and mobilized in support of the British, all in an effort to maintain elite control. This chapter is very typical of the overarching narrative of A People's History, which emphasizes class struggle throughout its entirety.