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Example research essay topic: John Smith And Winthrop - 1,852 words

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Life in New England in the early years of America was a chance for people to start over while including in this new way of life the philosophies they believed in. Leaders and prominent men like John Winthrop and John Smith saw America as a place to spread their ideas and make them into a functioning community. These men had different visions of what America was when they arrived there and of what it should become in time. Each of them wanted a type of change to occur in the New World. Winthrop was interested in forming a close community, serving God and avoiding selfishness. Smith saw America as a place to achieve wealth and become financially independent.

Smith also emphasizes the importance of being hard working people in order to achieve this wealth. The Puritan John Winthrop came to America and saw a fresh start in which to form a community locked together by religion. On the political side, Puritans were a group of Protestants who were opposed to the corruption and abuses of the Church of England. The Puritans wanted to purify their church, to make it holy and pleasing to God.

On the spiritual side, Puritans were men and women with a strong personal devotion to God. They believed that the chief goal of man was to: . do more service to the Lord, the comfort and increase of the body of Christ whereof we are members (4). The community Winthrop would start in New England would only contain people who shared these beliefs; a place where they could live, work and be among people who supported each other spiritually. Winthrop envisioned his New England community as being free from the corruption of the Church of England, which must have seemed to him to be too preoccupied with grandeur and money: manifest the work of his Spirit: first, upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them: so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor, and despised rise up against their superiors, and shake of their yoke. (1) The main focus of Winthrop's new community would be to serve God.

To Winthrop, the believer's true home is not on earth but in heaven, so he must be careful not to lose his heart to the all the things that this world has to offer: pleasures, material wealth, achievement, human love. The goodness of the things that God created should also not be denied. In New England, away from anything familiar, without a frame of reference for the world they would observe, there would be no distractions. The people in Winthrop's community could worship and serve God in a way that they saw was right. This type of God serving community is described in the Bible: Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. ( (Exodus 19: 5 - 6).

This passage from Exodus is a clear example of the kind of following of the Puritan idea of Gods demands that Winthrop wanted to achieve. If any nation observed God's laws and commands, God would give protection, prosperity, and the spiritual blessings of knowing him and living as his people. Or, if a people rejected God's decrees and turned to idolatry and sin, God would eventually reject them. The Puritans of seventeenth-century England were greatly concerned about the future of their nation; they saw the corruption of government and church officials, growing immorality, materialism, and lack of concern for the poor as signs that their nation would either have to repent or experience God's wrath. Members of the community helping one another is also a significant part of the new life in America for Winthrop.

Winthrop was not interested in he or his people becoming wealthy from self-interest, but from brotherly love. In his sermon A Model of Christian Charity, Winthrop often mentions avoiding self-interest and helping each other to overcome sin: That every man might have need of other, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the Bond of brotherly affection: from hence it appears plainly that no man is made more honourable then another (1) If people are civil to one another and help each other when they are in need, the community will stay strong. Winthrop also shows how not being selfish will bring the people of the community closer together because respecting one another is key to holding a community together: Each discerns by the work of the Spirit his own image and resemblance in another, and therefore cannot but love him as he loves himself (3). Here, Winthrop makes the point that each person in the community is part of God and should be respected and looked after by the other members.

Winthrop also emphasizes the concepts of Justice and Mercy. He says that By the first of these laws man as he was enables so withal is commanded to love his neighbor as himself (1) Avoiding self interest is not only important to community togetherness, but is also dictated in the Bible according to the Protestants. John Smith had a different approach to America. Where Winthrop saw it as a kind of paradise for religious freedom, Smith saw New England as a place to start over economically. America for Smith was a new venture in the world of money. The New World had resources to be collected.

Used and sold. In A Description of New England Smith speaks of his surroundings in the New World as many opportunities for successful business transactions. where this is victual to feed us, wood of all sorts to build boats, ships or barks; the fish at our doors, pitch, tar, masts yards and most other necessaries only for making? (3). Though Smiths essay was mostly an attempt to lure adventurous young settlers to New England, Smith also had personal reasons for writing it.

Smith was involved with a company called the Virginia Company. Smith promoted the Virginia Company's interests in the New World and he provided the leadership necessary to get the colonists through what must have been grueling early years of the settlement. Smith states many times in his essay the ways in which people arriving in the New World can achieve wealth even if they were not wealthy while living in England. The ways he describes mostly have to do with cultivating the resources of the land and waters. He lists many commodities that people can take from the land and use for themselves or sell for a gain: The main staple, from hence to be extracted for the present to produce the rest is fish. (5). Smith claims that fish are so abundant a resource in the new world that one may make a living off them to eat and to sell abroad.

He makes it clear to his reader that all aspects of this environment are fit for producing the things that will give wealth in the future. Smith is careful to leave no questions unanswered. First, the ground is so fertile that questionless it is capable of producing any grain, fruits or seeds you would sow or plant, (4). He even takes care to describe the soil in which crops will be planted. To an unhappy farmer in England who might have been thinking of coming to the New World, this is an important aspect of the environment. After reading these extravagant claims in Smiths writings, many settlers must have been frightened when they finally did arrive in New England.

Smith tends to list many of the same things over again in his writing. He lists them in different contexts though, sometimes eluding to another countrys fortunes which were achieved by activities similar to the ones Smith describes. But who doth not know that the poor Hollanders, chiefly by fishing, at a great charge and labor in all weathers in the open sea, are made a people so hardy and industrious? (3). In this passage, Smith brings the idea of fishing back into view, but also compares the activity with Hollands people.

This not only emphasizes fishing once again but also makes the reader wish to associate himself with hardy and industrious people by moving to America and doing the same thing the Hollanders did. Smith also makes it clear in this passage that the work the Hollanders did by fishing was a great charge and labor implying that the same work in the New World will be much easier. Smith lists foods and furs once again, in trying to persuade sailors to bring shiploads of necessities to the new world in return for these foods or furs. by whose arrival (the ships) may be made that provision of fish to... Of certain red berries called al kermes which is worth ten shillings a pound, but of these hath been sold for thirty or forty Of beavers, black foxes, and furs of price, may yearly be had 6 or 7, 000; (4 - 5) Still on the subject of ships and people who may be interested in building them, Smith once again lists wood as a commodity. Of woods seeing there is such plenty of all sorts, if those who build ships and boats, buy wood at so great a price, as it is in England live well by their trade, when labor is all required to take those necessaries w without any other tax, what hazard will be here, but do much better? (6) Smith tries to appeal to as many useful people as possible.

He wants to make sure that the people Who finally do come to New England to settle in Virginia are hard working and that they may know a useful trade as well to help build the colony and make it into a functioning economy. In this passage, Smith states again that work is done with ease in the New World where as labor is required for little gain in England, people may do much better in the new colony. Leaders in Early America approached the same land with different beliefs. This made them have different views of what life should be like in New England and what the new land had to offer people.

Both Winthrop and Smith saw a place to start again separate from England. Wealth, for each of these men meant something different. For Smith, New England was an opportunity to take financial wealth from the land; it was a land of unclaimed resources waiting to be cultivated. For Winthrop, New England meant religious freedom, a place to start over in the eyes of God and be free from past mistakes. They both thought that by starting a new life in New England, they could be successful in their beliefs. Both men produced writings, which were uplifting and promising to prospective settlers in New England in the hopes of starting their ideal society.

Bibliography: A model of Christian Charity, John Winthrop


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