Blisick: Colonial America was deeply unequal. Most people of every color were poor, laborers,. farm workers, builders, seamstresses. And those workers were prone to getting restless and pulling out the pitchforks. The disperate sentencing of john punch was one of the first examples of what would become an ongoing practice by the rich landowning class. Blisick: It switched their allegiance from the people in their same circumstance to the people at the top. He says it eventually created a multiclass coalition that became known as white.