What follows is a handbook on how to write a paper.  The subject, the kind, or the length of the paper is immaterial.  The method demonstrated below is gleaned from many years of attending college and even more years of teaching students.  Moreover, it is a method which can be altered to fit your own style and idiosyncrasies.  The most positive thing to be said about this method is…that it works.

We will deal with three major steps in writing a good paper:

1.  Preliminary considerations;
2.  A series of developmental steps;
3.  Footnotes and bibliography.

Preliminary Considerations

First of all, do not panic.  Your instructor will guide you and help you at every step.  Moreover, if you approach the paper in a systematic way, it will no longer be a gigantic chore, but a series of rather easily accomplished, small steps.  Second, make certain that you understand the question! If you have the slightest doubt, meet with the instructor.

Example:  "Discuss the major causes for immigration into the colonies prior to 1760."  In a question of this type you will want to consider all possible reasons.  There will be four major categories:  social, political, economic, and religious.  In addition you will discover, as you research the area, there will be some reasons that do not fit into any category; thus add a fifth category labeled "other" or miscellaneous reasons for immigration.

Not all topics can be approached this way, however.  If, for example, you choose a topic about "causes," you will want to organize your paper chronologically, or according to the significance of the causes.  Your topic will determine your organization.

DEVELOPMENTAL STEPS

Preliminary Research

At this point,t hen, you are ready to do your preliminary investigation.   Read the appropriate section in your text, or one or two articles found in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature to get enough information to start your paper.

Now sit down and write an outline of how you intend to proceed.   Remember, every formal paper will need an introductory paragraph and a conclusion.   (See Steps to Writing a Good Paper).  At this point, write your topical outline.

Major Research

You are now ready to do some serious research.  If your instructor has supplied a bibliography, get two or three of the more important works.  If you do not know which are important, ask the instructor.  If your paper is on a contemporary topic, go to the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature.  If none of the books in the bibliography is available, go to the card catalog and look under various related topics.  The following headings for the question under consideration might be fruitful: Colonies, North American-English, English Immigration, English Civil Wars, Religious Wars, Life in Colonial America, or Seventeenth Century English Society.

Now, sit down, read and take notes.  Read one or two sources thoroughly.  Remember, you will need to footnote quotations and paraphrases.  Quotations are the exact words of the author set off in quotation marks.  A paraphrase is a matter of using your own words to say what the author has told you.  You will need to make a value judgment at this point.  If the author is giving you a generally known thesis, you do not need to footnote.  If, on the other hand, it is his/her original thesis, you do.

Your footnote cards should contain the following information:

1.  Title of the class and the paper.  Top right corner.
2.  Page number.  One p or a single page and two p's for more than one.  Bottom left corner.
3.  The quotation or paraphrase.  Centered on the card.
4.  The identity of the book by author's name: Lower left corner.
5.  The location in your outline by the identifications on your outline.  Lower right corner. 

Caution:  You may want to reorganize later and this notation could change. 

The identity of the author will have to be listed separately unless you include all of the pertinent information on the footnote card.

Example:

Bibliography Card

The final step of this part of the work is to go back to your preliminary outline and rewrite it.  This time make a sentence outline. (See Steps to Writing a Good Paper.) Do this now.

Final Research

Now that you have finished your sentence outline, examine some of the books and articles of secondary importance.   Look the topics up in the index and read the sections which are germane to your paper.   By doing this you may discover additional, valuable insights and you will certainly impress your instructor with your diligence, as will be shown in your footnotes and bibliography.

Now you are ready to write your final outline—the paragraph outline.  This time include all of your information, quotations, paraphrases, and make every topical sentence into a paragraph.  (See Paragraph Outline.) You will also eliminate the letters and numbers, as well as writing your introduction and conclusions.

FOOTNOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Most Barstow College instructors will allow you to use any of three styles of footnoting.  They are:

1. Bottom of the page footnotes.
2. Footnote page or Endnotes.
3. Parenthetical footnotes.

Bottom of the Page

Unless you have a word processor, this is the most difficult and the most time-consuming.  Bear in mind, however, it is the preferred method in most universities.

In this style your quotations or paraphrases are followed by a number raised one-half line above your sentence(s).  Thus: "Enclosing the Commons set many people adrift in 17th Century England."¹ At the bottom of the page you note as follows:

¹The English People on the Eve of Colonization, pp. 6-8, Notestein.

Separate Note Page:

The same information in the same order, by number, is listed on the next to the last page of your final paper.

Parenthetical Footnotes:

These follow the sentence or phrase you are citing and have a slightly different format.  Like this:  "Enclosing the Commons set many people adrift in 17th Century England." (Notestein, The English People, pp. 6-8).

Final Reorganization:

As you review the sentence outline or even as you are writing the final draft, you many want to make some final revisions or deletions.

For example, in the enclosed paper, I referred to the religious reasons as the most important reason for immigration; yet, I had it last or next to last in my sentence outline. So, in the final draft I moved that section to first place.  In addition, if you compare my sentence outline with the final draft you will note that I also deleted some repetition.  I had mentioned, for example, the emptying of the English goals under three headings.  I deleted all but one.

Now, when you have typed your final draft and if you have followed these recommendations faithfully, you have very likely written a college level paper, and the result will be in the hands of the goddess of history, Clio.

J. W. Edwin Spear

Step 1: Topical Outline

Step 2: Sentence Outline

Step 3: Paragraph Outline or Finished Paper

Question: Discuss the major causes for immigration into the colonies prior to 1760.

By 1760, the English North American colonies were busy, prosperous settled regions. The coastal areas had been settled for over a hundred years, and every generation the frontier was pushed back toward the fall-line of the Alleghenies.

One might wonder, however, why large numbers of people would leave the ancient settlements of Europe to brave the wilderness of North America. No single reason will tell the whole story, for there were a number of causes for this mass migration.

By far the most important reason for immigration into the North American continent was religious belief and the turmoil caused by religious differences. From the time of Martin Luther’s publication of his Ninety-Five Theses until well after the Treaties of Westphalia (1648), Europe was convulsed from within by revolution and from without by international wars. Contesting sects of Christians within every nation sought to impose their beliefs on their fellows by whatever method necessary—war, torture, mayhem, etc.¹  Thousands died, other thousands were rendered homeless, and even more thousands suffered persecutions ranging from torture to exclusion or exile.

Any religious sect in a position of political power, however temporary, persecuted every other sect. During the Thirty Years War, for example, Spanish Catholics overran the domain of the Palatinate, a protestant area. The Spanish brought the inquisition with them; thus, the Palantine Germans were given the choice of "Kissing the Cross" or dying. Many thousands escaped to Brandenburg-Prussia or to the English North American colonies.²  We call them Pennsylvania Dutch. Similar events occurred all over Europe, including England.

The Treaties of Westphalia stipulated that the religion of the prince would be the religion of the people. So, even after the last religious war, many thousands were forced to emigrate.³

In France the Protestants (called Huguenots) were faced with the same dilemma when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. Thousands found their way to North America.⁴

Persecution in England during the 17^th century was not as harsh, but the dissenting sects—Presbyterians, Puritans, Quakers, etc., did face social, political and economic sanctions. Thus, many of them emigrated also. Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn as a haven for Quakers and Maryland was a haven for Catholics.⁵

The Puritans, too, were "harried out of the land," but most of them felt called upon by God to found His kingdom on earth in Massachusetts. For the first century of its existence the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a theocracy. It is to this migration that America owes one of its most powerful philosophies, that is, "God’s Chosen People in God’s Chosen Land."⁶

Although waning in importance after the turn of the eighteenth century, religious belief was an important factor in immigration to America up until the time of the revolution.

During the period of religious upheaval, Europe was also experiencing rapid and far-reaching social changes. In fact, society was in a state of flux. Medieval social institutions were still firmly in place in some areas, but in other areas an entirely new social order was emerging.

The class of serfs, the most numerous of the medieval classes, finally disappeared during this period. The surety of a livelihood, however demeaning, was replaced by new freedoms. The most important one seems to have been the freedom to starve. The cotters, descendants of serfs, no longer had land to work. They built their huts on the edges of common land and made a subsistence living farming an acre or so and running some livestock on the Commons. The Enclosure movement swept them off the land and cast them adrift. Many drifted to North America.⁷

The growing capitalist system reduced many artisans to workers in the new cottage industries and a new class of entrepreneurs arrived to make money from their work; thus, the guilds declined in power. Many craftsmen went to North America as did many of the weavers and spinners who were employed in their stead.⁸

Due to the momentum of the Age of Exploration and the economic opportunities it brought with it, a new class of wealthy was being born—the capitalists. Virginia, for example, was one of the results of the growth of this monied class.

However, the main basis of wealth and power, in England, was still land. The ownership of land carried with it not only social prestige, but the right to vote, the right to "sit" for Parliament, and the right to govern, locally. Land, on the other hand, was very expensive in England and the average yeoman farmer could work for generations without changing his social status. Thus, the rich got richer—and the poor got poorer, for the farmer seldom worked any but leased or rented land that got more expensive by the year.⁹

However, almost all of the colonies practiced the "head right" system. So if a farmer could get his "head" to North America, 50 acres of land was his for the taking. With that as a base and an abundance of cheap land available to him, by dint of hard work, he could, in a few years, become a member of the House of Burgesses and thus, a Gentleman.¹⁰

As a result of Enclosure, as well as "scientific" farming and the growth of capitalist enterprise, thousands of people in England were on the move. They moved to London or to the port cities looking for work. The ruling classes came to the conclusion that England was overpopulated. They first revised and then extended the Elizabethan Poor Laws. These laws required that to get any relief from their poverty the poor would have to return to the parish of their birth. Moreover, while some assistance was given to the obviously inform, the strong-backed males were labeled as "sturdy beggars" and were forced to work in "workhouses" or thrown into gaol as vagrants.¹¹

English gaols at the time seldom contained many actual criminals—they were executed. They did contain vagrants, debtors, prostitutes, orphans, and waifs. Periodically, this riff-raff of society was herded aboard ships and sent off to North America. There their labor was sold under contracts of indenture. They were expected to labor for seven years, usually, and then they were given the tools to start farming and obtained their "head right" of 50 acres.¹²

One of the colonies, Georgia, was founded to help alleviate the suffering of the English poor. George Oglethorpe and a group of friends got a land grant from King George and planned to establish an agrarian society of yeoman farmers. Thus, they banned the holding of slaves, the drinking of spirits, the amassing of large estates, and gambling in their new colony. While they did transport large numbers of poor to Georgia, they were unable to keep it from becoming like its neighbors to the north.¹⁷  That is, it became a typical slave state.

During much of the seventeenth century, Europe was in political turmoil as well as suffering from religious warfare and undergoing basic social changes. The idea of divine right or absolute monarchy was sweeping through Europe at the time. One of its victims was James I of England.¹⁴

James VI of Scotland, on inheriting the English Crown in 1603 and becoming James I, proceeded to England to establish himself as an absolute monarch in that nation. He had written a pamphlet entitled "The True Rights and Freedoms of Monarchs" setting forth these principles. To him the king ruled by the divine right of God and was answerable only to God, but, not answerable to subjects, parliaments, common law or any other authority on earth. The English, with a long history of certain rights and privileges, did not take too kindly to James I, but he was wise enough to confine his ideas to talking. Indeed, he was known as the "wisest fool in Christendom."¹⁵

Thus, James I died in bed. his son, however, Charles I, was not so wise. He attempted to subvert the English rights and privileges and to rule without Parliament. This led, in 1629, to the Great Migration of Puritans to New England and, in 1640 to civil war.

The civil wars lasted from 1640 to 1649 when the King was defeated, captured, tried and beheaded—in that order. The coalition of forces which defeated him was composed of Calvinists representing several factions or beliefs. They fell to fighting among themselves and eventually Oliver Cromwell had to restore order through dictatorial means. Cromwell, in fact, became absolute without being divinely chosen. He used the army instead. His actions accelerated emigration.¹⁶

Oliver I, as he was sometimes called, died in 1658 without establishing a viable alternative to monarchy; thus, the monarchy was restored in 1660. Charles II became King and a significant number of regicides felt safe with 3,000 miles of ocean between them and the Court of St. James.¹⁷

Charles also arrived with a Catholic wife and thus, a priest. While life became somewhat more tolerable for Catholics, it became less tolerable for the other dissenting sects. More importantly, Charles II was very intelligent and very determined to restrict the powers of the Parliament. A subsidy from Louis XIV of France made him less dependent upon the largesse of Parliament as well.¹⁸  By the time of his death, in 1685, he had largely reversed the decisions won on the battlefields of the civil war. He had also sent waves of discouraged Englishmen to North America.

He was followed by his younger brother, James II, who, in many respects, was a carbon copy of "Bad King John." He had vast ideas but only half-vast abilities. The English were willing to wait him out, for he was childless. Then, in 1688, a male child was born to his wife, and the Parliamentarians took action.

Following negotiations, William of Orange and his wife, Mary, became monarchs of England in 1688. The great English migration came to an end with the Glorious Revolution. However, while English immigration slowed to a trickle, the English had firmly stamped North America with their language, their customs, and their political ideals.¹⁹

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, war was endemic in Europe. One of the several results of these wars was a greater concentration of power in the hands of the prince. Ancient rights and privileges were destroyed, taxes were raised, and the authority of the prince weighed more heavily upon all. Many people left for the "free air" of North America. Many people had entirely different reasons for braving the American wilderness.

Some, indeed, had no choice in the matter. By the time of the American Revolution there were over 400,000 African slaves in the United States. They had come unwillingly, forcibly taken to a strange new land to become the economic basis of the South.

The most universal route was called the Triangular Trade. A ship’s master would load sugar and molasses in the West Indies; trade it for rum in New England; set sail to Africa and trade the rum for a human cargo there; and then back to America to sell the slaves.²¹

Other groups of involuntary immigrants came from the English gaols, or from the battlefields of rebellions lost. Still others, facing intolerable conditions at home, would indenture themselves for a period of years.

And finally, there were always those who will seek out danger, adventure, and new surroundings. They were sometimes accompanied by those who were one step ahead of the hangman or just a hop, skip and jump ahead of their creditors.

In addition, after the Revolution, many of the English soldiers or the Hessian mercenaries chose to remain in the country they had so recently tried to destroy.

All of these people, too, became part of that matrix which formed America.

In conclusion, there are no simple answers or easy ones relative to causal relationships. People braved the wilderness for a multitude of reasons and frequently, very frequently, a single individual would have several reasons for walking down the gangplank into a robust, vigorous, new society.

Footnotes

1. Richard S. Dunn, Age of Religious Wars, p. 256
2. Richard Hofstadter, William Miller and Daniel Aaron, The American Revolution, pp. 89–90
3. Davie Ogg, Europe in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 168–169.
4. Ibid. p. 2.
5. Op. cit. Hofstadter, pp. 72–73
6. David Hall, Ed., Puritanism in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts, "The Massachusetts Bay Company and the People," p. 48
7. G. W. O. Woodward, A Short History of Sixteenth Century England: 1485–1603, p. 24.
8. G. N. Clark, The Seventeenth Century, p. 64
9. Lacey Baldwin Smith, This Realm of England, 1399–1688, pp. 70–71.
10. Winthrop D. Jordan and Leon F. Litwack, The United States: Conquering a Continent, Vol. I, p. 21
11. S. T. Bindoff, Tudor England, pp. 292–294.
12. Op. cit., Jordan, p. 21.
13. Op. cit., Hofstadter, pp. 70–71.
14. Maurice Ashley, England in the Seventeenth Century (1603–1714)., p. 14.
15. Ibid., p. 10.
16. Roger Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain 1471–1714, pp. 299–303.
17. Op. cit., Ashley, p. 123.
18. Op. cit., Lockyer, p. 340.
19. Op. cit., Ashley, p. 179.
20. Op. cit., Dunn, p. 160.
21. Op. cit., Hofstadter, pp. 66-67.

Bibliography

Ashley, Maurice, England in the Seventeenth Century (1603–1714), Pelican Books, Cox & Wyman, Ltd., London, England, 1963.

Bindoff, S. T., Tudor England, Penguin Books, Baltimore, Maryland, 1967.

Clark, G. M., The Seventeenth Century, Clarendon Press, Oxford, England, 2^nd Ed., 1947.

Dunn, Richard S., The Age of Religious Wars, 1559–1589, W. W. Norton & Co., N.Y., N. Y., 1970

Hall, David, Ed., Puritanism in Seventeenth Century Massachusetts, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, N. Y., 1970.

Hofstadter, Richard; Miller, William; Aaron, Daniel, The American Republic, Vol. I, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 2^nd Ed., 1970.

Jordan, Winthrop D. and Litwack, Leon F., The United States: Conquering a Continent, Vol. I, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 6^th Ed., 1987.

Lockyer, Roger, Tudor and Stuart Britain, 1471–1714, St. Martin’s Press, N. Y., N. Y., 1967.

Notestein, Wallace, English Constitutional Conflicts, Oxford press, London, England, 1917.

Notestein, Wallace, The English People on the Eve of Colonization, Oxford Press, London, England, 1921.

Ogg, David, Europe in the Seventeenth Century, Adam and Charles Black, London, England, 1960.

Smith, Lacey Baldwin, This Realm of England, 1388–1688, Heath & Co., Boston, Mass., 1966.

Woodward, G. W. O., A Short History of Sixteenth Century England: 1485–1603, Blandford Press, London, England, 1963.