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82 PERIOD 2 Colonial America amid Global Change: 1607–1754

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hydrant and totaled my car and got my groceries all wet.” This is some strong evi-
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dence that I had an awful day! But the evidence I provide my friend is most important
because it allows them to determine if they agree with my claim. My friend might
say, “Wow! That’s really awful. I’ve never had a day like that.” This tells me that my
evidence was compelling, which means that my friend was convinced to agree with
Copyright (c) 2024 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
my claim because of the power of my examples.
Yet someone else might say, “Oh come on! That kind of stuff happens to me every
day!” This tells me that this person doesn’t find my evidence as persuasive. Notice
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that they also offered a counterclaim (“This kind of stuff happens to me every day!”).
I might find this an incredible claim and say, “What?! Prove it!” This requires them
to provide evidence that they have my kind of day every day. And if I don’t find their
evidence compelling, I might try to provide my own evidence to disprove their claim.
Believe it or not, when historians argue, they follow the same steps: they claim,
they cite evidence, and then they explain why their evidence supports their claim. This
should remind you of the strategy of “Claim, Support, and Explain” (CSE) that you
learned in Period 1.

ACTIVITY
Below is an excerpt from an article by Cara Anzilotti about women in colonial South
Carolina. First, in a single sentence, and in your own words, summarize the claim
that Anzilotti makes about women in colonial South Carolina. Then, write one to
two sentences identifying three examples of evidence that Anzilotti uses to support
her claim. Your evidence should be specific historical information that Anzilotti uses
to prove her claim. Finally, in one to two sentences, explain how the evidence you
collected from Anzilotti’s article supports her claim.

“[South Carolina’s] great profits from the sale of cash crops, live-stock,
and naval stores came at a high price for the settlers in the low-country
around Charleston; adults there often died prematurely, and upon the death
of their husbands, wives became heads of household and managers of
their families’ holdings. The death rate was alarmingly high. Throughout
the colonial period, diseases, including malaria, dysentery, and yellow
fever, contributed to a child mortality rate of 33 percent and an adult life
expectancy of only forty-five years. . . . For the planter elite, who tried to
maintain their position in a social environment plagued by demographic
disruption, placing economic power in the hands of their wives and
daughters became essential to the survival of the social order they had
so carefully imported and erected. Women became the crucial links in
the chain of inheritance among planter families, vital to the durability of
Carolina’s highly structured society, which relied upon a clearly defined,
carefully implemented, locally adapted patriarchal system to ensure the
social and political dominance of the men who had established it. These
women, understanding both their own importance in this enterprise and
the possibilities for independence presented to them, chose to take a
conservative path and to forgo the opportunity to establish themselves as
autonomous individuals. Instead, female planters shored up the patriarchal
structure and thus helped their families remain wealthy and powerful.”
Excerpt from Cara Anzilotti, “Autonomy and the Female Planter in Colonial
South Carolina,” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 63, no. 2, May 1997.
Copyright © 1997 by Southern Historical Association. Used with permission.

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