The Classical Appeals in Action: Woman’s Rights to the Suffrage

The Classical Appeals in Action: Woman’s Rights to the Suffrage”

Throughout history, the most memorable and influential speeches have been made by those who use logical reasoning, emotional appeal, and credibility to express their opinions on a particular issue. Susan B. Anthony resisted the idea of a world dominated by men with women as their subject, and ultimately the control they had over women’s liberties. Anthony set out to end the patriarchal society that denied women their constitutional rights and sought equality despite a person’s sex. Anthony used all three of Aristotle’s emotional appeals in order to send a lasting message about the unequal rights of the country at the time in her speech after her arrest in 1872 after voting in a presidential election.

Anthony used the plain text of the United States Constitution to express logos to her audiences. I believe that this appeal is what left such a lasting effect on the American public because at the time their interpretation of the constitution referred only to the male population. For the first time, she forced the public to recognize women as people and members of society instead of subjects. The main quotes from her speech that I consider logos are the following: “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens...but we, the whole people, who formed the Union” ("Woman’s Rights To The Suffrage", 1873) (Para.2).“For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land...this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed...this government is not a democracy.” (Para.3). “Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office…Are women persons? ... Being persons, then, women are citizens… Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void” (Para.4,5).

Anthony’s ethos are conveyed through the sources that she mentions in her speech. She begins her speech with a preamble to the United States Constitution, which she uses as her primary source for her argument. The constitution clearly refers