Susan B. Anthony\'s Speech: \"Women\'s Right to Suffrage\"

¶ … Success: Susan B. Anthony's Speech

The 1870s went down in history as the decade when women's movements stood strongly against oppression, demanding that women be given the same rights as men. In 1873, Susan Anthony was arrested and later released on a $100 dollar fine, all because she had voted in the presidential election the previous year. This, in her mind, amounted to oppression, and was an injustice not only to her, but to all American women. She took her stand, stating that if African-Americans, who prior to 1865 were not considered U.S. citizens, could vote, then women who were citizens by every technical definition, had every right to vote. Antony's speech, 'Women's Right to Vote' successfully combines pathos, logos, and ethos, using both facts and personal testimony to create emotional resonance in her audience. Although this speech alone was not sufficient to grant women the right to vote, it effectively demonstrated that a woman is more than just a house-keeper and a pretty face. Women in the past were treated harshly by their male counterparts, but thanks to Susan's resolution, and the resolution of others like her, women today have many opportunities that they once did not.

Susan starts off her speech by recounting the accusation that she had unlawfully voted in the presidential election (Halsall). This, in her mind, was an infringement on her rights as a citizen of the U.S. (Miraglia 9). She begins by referring to her audience as "friends and fellow citizens" (Halsall). With this, she creates a connection with her audience, with the aim of getting the crowd to identify with her, and the 'crime' she had allegedly committed.

With the euphemism 'alleged crime,' she paints the picture that what she had done was no crime, and that she, in her understanding, was innocent. Anthony's clever choice of words not only demonstrates her understanding of the audience's viewpoint, but also enables her to appeal to the crowd's sense of ethos and pathos.

In addition to the emotional appeal, Anthony appeals to logic through the use of a strong, historical document that bound all Americans -- the U.S. Constitution (Halsall). She uses the very preamble of the Constitution to back up her claim. She puts the preamble's first six words -- "we, the people of the United States"- into perspective, clearly clarifying that it is "not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens, but we, the whole people;" and that the term 'people' collectively refers to men and women (Halsall).

She builds her next argument about the Constitution on its promise of posterity and liberty to 'the people.' She categorically states that there is absolutely no guarantee that women will enjoy these rights if they are not even allowed to choose their preferred leaders (Halsall). To this end, she uses the ethos approach and through words such as 'mockery' and 'the 'democratic-republic,' makes it sound shameful to keep excluding women from the most important activities and decisions. This was a strategy to draw the audience's attention to the logical information and analogies she makes reference to next (Miraglia 14).

In the next paragraph, Anthony adopts a logo approach that later turns into pathos. She starts off by stating that any law that denies half the population the right to vote on the qualification of sex amounts to ex-post facto law, which the Constitution holds illegal (Miraglia 14).

Next, Anthony turns to exaggerating the sex oligarch, referring to the U.S. government as "an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe" (Halsall). She states that the sex oligarchy is simply intolerable, and that the government was only using it to ensure that men ruled over women. She further states that in the oligarchies of wealth and learning, the rich ruled their not-so-lucky counterparts but did not take away their independence. Why, then, should the oligarchy of sex take away the rights of women?