Supporting Claims With Evidence

Learning Objectives

  • Support historical arguments with evidence from sources

On the previous page, we learned how to identify and create a claim and a thesis statement for a historical argument. When authoring a historical research paper, the next steps involve supporting your thesis statement by synthesizing your research.

Supporting Your Argument

Remember, an argument is only an argument if you can give reasons why you think it’s true. These reasons support the thesis claim, which sums up the point of the argument. The supports will be found in the paragraphs of the essay. To locate them, we can look for the “key sentences” of the paragraph. A key sentence sometimes called a “topic sentence,” will establish the paragraph’s main point. It also helps connect the paragraph to the overall argument.

Let’s look at an example. Here is more of the example essay we began on the previous page, which argues that, yes, New Deal spending and programs succeeded in restoring American capitalism during the Great Depression, and the government should have spent more money to help the New Deal succeed.

Sample Essay #2

Note that the thesis statement is highlighted in blue, and some supporting reasons connected to their claim are detailed in the second paragraph. The end of the second paragraph concludes with a key sentence that connects the paragraph to the argument.

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his inaugural address on March 4, 1933, America was in the midst of financial collapse. Banking holidays closed banks in 28 states, and investors traded their dollars for gold to have tangible wealth. The president reassured Americans, “This great Nation will endure as it has endured and will revive and will prosper.” He listed three goals to shore up capitalism through his New Deal: banking regulation, laws to curb speculation, and the establishment of a sound currency basis. Roosevelt shored up the financial sector through regulation to restore the public trust that mismanaged banks, and financial speculators had destroyed. His New Deal gave the federal government regulatory responsibility to smooth economic downturns. Over the next eight years, the New Deal’s economic practices and spending helped create recovery and restore capitalism.

By the time Roosevelt was inaugurated in the spring of 1933, almost 5,500 banks had failed, and, in many cases, their customers had lost their deposits and life savings. Therefore, Roosevelt’s first task was to restore confidence in the banking system, so on March 6, he declared a four-day national bank holiday. While banks were closed, Congress quickly approved the Emergency Banking Relief Act to audit the financial viability of banks and provide emergency currency. When banks reopened, the federal government guaranteed that banks were safe, and deposits outnumbered withdrawals. The following month, Roosevelt banned the use of gold for foreign exchange and increased its price to increase the U.S. gold supply and thereby causing inflation in a depressed economy suffering deflation. By June 1933, legislation required full disclosure for stock sales, and the Glass-Steagall Act separated consumer and investment banking to prevent bank speculation with consumer deposits. Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock market. These measures restored Americans’ faith in the financial system.

Try It

Synthesizing Evidence

At this point in the writing process, you have a claim and a thesis statement. You can now turn to synthesizing your evidence and presenting the historical context. Turn to your research and pull out the evidence that supports your claim. Cite your sources as you piece together the evidence. To do that, you’ll pull in information from your sources by paraphrasing, summarizing, or quoting from elsewhere (remember to use quotes sparingly!). When you are ready to write the body paragraphs of your essay, remember to:

  • Present your evidence in a clear and compelling sequence. Situate your evidence in an order that takes your reader step-by-step through your argument. Make sure that the examples you’ve chosen address your thesis and that they aren’t broad generalizations.
  • Contextualize your evidence. Do you situate your evidence and research into the historical context? Don’t drop in quotes or summaries from elsewhere without explaining them and connecting them to your claim.

Link to learning: Essay outline

You can see an outline of an essay about the New Deal on page 3 of this writing guide.

Let’s take a look at another example. During the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, a U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a meeting with expert economists and historians to understand better what actions the government took to fight the Great Depression and what relevant lessons to the recession. One of the attendees was historian Allan Winkler. Read a passage from his prepared statement, keeping an eye out for how he both makes claims about the New Deal and uses evidence to support his arguments.

The New Deal: Accomplishments and Failures

Overall, what did the New Deal do?

First, it addressed the unemployed. A Federal Emergency Relief Administration provided direct assistance to the states to pass it on to those out of work. The following winter, a work-relief program provided jobs in the brief period it existed. Then, in 1935, FDR created the Works Progress Administration, which paid all kinds of people, including artists, actors, and authors, to work and build new schools, bridges, and other structures around the country. It was expensive, to be sure, but it made a substantial economic and emotional difference to the people it assisted.

Second, the New Deal sought to do something to promote recovery. The National Recovery Administration attempted to check unbridled competition, driving prices down and contributing to a deflationary spiral. It tried to stabilize wages, prices, and working hours through detailed codes of fair competition. Meanwhile, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration sought to stabilize prices in the farm sector by paying farmers to produce less.

Finally, throughout the New Deal, the administration addressed questions of structural reform. The Wagner Act, which created the National Labor Relations Board in 1935, was a monumental step forward in giving workers the right to bargain collectively and to arrange for fair and open elections to determine a bargain agent if laborers so chose. The Social Security Act the same year was, in many ways, one of the most important New Deal measures in providing security for those reaching old age with a self-supporting plan for retirement pensions. But there were other reform measures as well. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation were new. And the Glass-Steagall Act, only recently repealed with frightful consequences, separated commercial and investment banking.

Identifying Claims

Before we explore the supporting evidence, what claims is the author making about the New Deal?

 

Gathering Supporting Evidence

The speaker claims that the New Deal addressed unemployment. What supporting evidence does he use to back up that claim?

 

In the section above, Dr. Winkler highlighted the good brought about by the New Deal. That was just one section of his larger argument. His thesis statement was actually this:

  • [The New Deal] was a multi-faceted attempt to deal with different elements of the catastrophe in ways that sometimes seemed haphazard and occasionally contradictory. On balance, though, the New Deal enjoyed some notable accomplishments, even if it failed to promote full-scale economic recovery.

This tends to be the general sentiment of most historians today, who argue that the New Deal programs made an impact but that government spending accelerated by World War II ended the Great Depression.

Putting It Together

Now that you’ve learned about creating a thesis statement and supporting your claims with evidence, you are well on completing a research assignment or writing an essay. It’s always a good idea to put your argument and supporting details together in an outline before you begin. See the example essay outline to see a standard structure for argumentative essays.

Example Argumentative Essay Outline

  1. Introduction
    • provides background information on the topic
    • states of your position on the topic (thesis)
    • summarizes arguments 
  2. Body paragraphs
    • Paragraph 1
      1. Topic sentence outlining the first claim
      2. Sentences giving explanations and providing evidence to support the topic sentence
      3. Concluding sentence – link to next paragraph
    • Paragraph 2 (or more)
      1. Topic sentence outlining the second claim
      2. Sentences giving explanations and providing evidence to back the topic sentence
      3. Concluding sentence – link to next paragraph
    • Paragraph 3: rebuttal
      • Topic sentence outlining any possible counterarguments
      • Provide evidence to refute counterarguments
  3. Conclusion
    • Summary of the main points of the body
    • Restatement of the position
  4. Bibliography / Works Cited

Activity #2

Picking one of the thesis statements about your historical figure from the previous activity, create an essay outline supporting your thesis statement using supporting evidence. It can be a simplified version of the outline above, like this:

  1. Thesis statement:
    1. Body paragraph claim #1:
      1. Supporting evidence for claim:
    2. Body paragraph claim #2:
      1. Supporting evidence for claim:
    3. Body paragraph claim #3:
      1. Supporting evidence for claim:

Use the space below to jot down your ideas.

Glossary

Primary source: a first-hand or contemporary source of an event or topic.

Secondary source: relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. A secondary source gives information about a primary source and typically involves generalization, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of the original information.

Thesis statement: a statement of the topic of the piece of writing and the angle the writer has on that topic