The Classical Appeals in Action: Woman’s Rights to the SuffrageThe 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.
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On May 3, 1876, Anthony was brought to New Orleans to plead guilty after she received an 18th-century “tireless penalty” for failing to pay her bills or for a drunken stench that was her usual drinking and smoking habit, and admitted during her trial that she had drunk more than $21,000 of wine and was driving under the influence. But instead of facing her sentence, the judge ordered her to pay $25,000 in restitution and a jury trial. After the jury returned the verdict and the jury awarded her $45,000, Anthony received another $3,000. It was during her trial that she learned of these damages and of the amount paid to her in restitution and jury trial, and she and several of her friends discovered the original $5,000 of restitution. Her lawyer, Richard M. Tompkins, sued on her behalf claiming that he had been the “glimpsed off star,” a description of what was to come—that, by his own admission, he had paid the $2,500 and $3,000 she paid to his lawyer so he could recover what he claimed to be. Finally, the judge held a hearing in which Anthony testified that she said it was her conscience which caused her not to pay what he claimed. On hearing the testimony of her friend, then-Judge Earl P. Witherspoon, that she had agreed to pay the $5,000 which Anthony told Tompkins that she had been told she owed, she was persuaded by her lawyer and the other friends that it was money. A jury and later a jury of the American Association of People’s Lawyers and some judges dismissed M.S. Anthony’s arguments. In December 1878, after three years of trial by jury, Anthony was convicted in a trial in New Orleans of first degree murder and sentenced to death. She was subsequently executed for the crime she had never even been charged with; her body was later found buried in the cemetery. Trommel and his widow, Margaret T. Anthony, had lived in New Orleans and remained close to Anthony during her incarceration. During Anthony’s trial, M.S. Anthony was found guilty of five counts of first degree murder, three of third degree murder and one of murder of a woman. The state Supreme Court sentenced Anthony to death for the murder of C. Ann B. Davis in 1885, and awarded her more than $25,000 and allowed her to be executed, along with any and all other victims who were tried. Although Anthony never received a pardon in the United States and was never formally given a pardon, she was pardoned in Massachusetts in 1897 for her role in the Virginia Militia’s escape from slavery. In May 1893, after Anthony’s death, Susan B. Anthony visited her grave. Shortly thereafter, Susan moved to New Orleans. The first public acknowledgment of the events of June 28, 1891, came from the widow of Mary W. Anthony, who took to the stage at the National Press Club in New Orleans just hours before Mr. Tompkins came to trial in January 1893 for the charge of fraudulently setting up private residences at the White’s Mill House. The event was a huge success, and the city was hailed and remembered along with its neighbors as a
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 citizensbut 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