.Paper Assignment
Description

This is the overview:

In a WELL-ORGANIZED, WELL-WRITTEN 4-6 pp. TYPED essay (12 point, double-spaced, numbered pages, full margins, hard copy), answer the following question. Try to answer the question in all of its parts.
DUE AT CLASS TIME (11 a.m.) MONDAY, November 18. Late papers will be penalized.
Today, in the United States, we tend to associate slavery with the plantation societies that existed in the southern colonies and states. In fact, slavery existed in many places throughout the world, in many different forms and over a longer period of time. In colonial British America, slavery was found on plantations, on farms, in cities, and on the backcountry frontiers. It existed in all the American mainland colonies and in the Caribbean. The structure of work differed considerably from place to place, as did the experiences of the enslaved from one place to another.
Study the materials we have had on slavery in this class, from the lectures, readings, and recitations. Consider the following question: In what ways, and to what extent, did slavery differ among the various regions of early America? Among the topics you might consider are work regimens, family and community life, gender roles, slave codes, resistance to slavery, the attitudes of slaveholders and the treatment of slaves? Why did those differing conditions exist in the various regions? What aspects of slavery did NOT differ from place to place? Discuss, considering and comparing, AT LEAST THREE of the following regions of early America: Jamestown and the rest of the Chesapeake region; Barbados and the British Caribbean; Carolina; and the Middle-Colony region incorporating Dutch and English New York and Quaker Pennsylvania.
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The Ground Rules:
1. You may read whatever you wish on the subject, but your answer MUST be based on MATERIALS FROM THIS CLASS. It would be easy enough to go on the internet and download discussions of slavery; it is extremely unlikely, however, that those discussions would center specifically on the materials we have covered in this class. Moreover, the goal of the assignment is to have you produce an organized and coherent essay on the topic based upon class materials and not simply to accumulate information. You may cite these materials – either the reading or class notes – with a simple parenthetical style (e.g. Sourcebook, p. 14 or Class Lecture on Slavery). I would suggest looking in Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 11 in the textbook, as well as any relevant materials from the sourcebook, the class lectures, and the discussions.
2. Writing counts. We are looking for organized and coherent essays, as well as essays that make their arguments. We are also willing to help with that in the following manner. Anyone wishing help with the organization and presentation of the essay may submit to his or her recitation instructor the opening PAGE of an essay by class time (lecture) on Wednesday, November 13. We will accept no more than ONE page, double-spaced and typed. We will comment upon them and return them to you.
3. You may discuss this assignment among yourselves, but when you write it, it must be your own essay in your own words. The odds against two students randomly choosing the same words – other than in quotations – are sufficiently large that I will consider the matter proven against you.
4. You do not need to footnote course materials – readings, lectures, or discussions. If you borrow or quote from those directly you should note the source of the borrowing or the quotation parenthetically – e.g. (Sourcebook, p.97). If you borrow passages directly, you must quote and cite the source as appropriate. Borrowing without properly attributing from any other sources – even if you paraphrase — constitutes PLAGIARISM and leads to severe penalties both within the course and the university. Don’t even think about it!
5. If you are unable to hand in your essay on the due date, you have two options that will avoid late penalties. The first is that you may, of course, hand the paper in early. The second is that you may e-mail the paper to me or to your recitation instructor by class time on the due date. Your paper will then be marked on time. You must still bring the hard copy of the paper to the NEXT CLASS. Even if you e-mail the paper on time, it is still YOUR responsibility to see that we receive the hard copy. We will not chase you for the hard copy, and we will not read e-mailed papers!
Writing Tips
Good writing is an important skill not only at the university, but in life. The ability to write will benefit you whatever you do. Good writing is also the study of a lifetime, and we cannot confront everything at once. For the purposes of this essay, I ask you to pay particular attention to the following five rules, which are a combination of general rules of good writing and my pet peeves. Ignore them at your peril!
1. Make sure your introductory paragraph clearly states what it is you are arguing, and where the essay is going. Otherwise the reader has no way to know. I may miss your most important points if you haven’t alerted me to them.
2. Write complete sentences. The sentences we use in this type of writing all contain subjects AND verbs. These are not text messages. LOL!
3. Compound sentences – sentences containing multiple subjects and verbs — require both commas and conjunctions (and, but, etc.). In rare cases one may use a semi-colon rather than the comma and conjunction. Do NOT omit the conjunction; two clauses separated only by a comma (or without the comma) constitute a run-on sentence. They annoy me.
4. Make sure your subjects and verbs agree, and that your subjects agree with themselves. If the subject is singular, the verb must be the appropriate form for a singular subject.
5. Use proper tenses and be consistent! History happened in the past, so please discuss it that way. The complication is that while everything we read was written in the past – otherwise we couldn’t be reading it – the writings still exist in the present. So if one is analyzing a piece of writing as writing, it is possible to refer to that writing in the present – if it is the TEXT of the writing you are discussing rather than using it to tell what happened. But at the very least you must BE CONSISTENT!

Good luck!

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