Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Susan B Anthony

This humanities passage is from a speech by Susan B. Anthony, a 19th-century women’s rights leader. Susan B. Anthony, the leader in the women’s rights movement, has voted at the last Presidential election, and was branded as a criminal who refuses to follow the U.S. Law. However, in this speech, she asserts that she has not committed crime, but only is simply aware of her and all United States citizens’ rights. Anthony, as one of the suffragettes, justifies her decision of voting and clarifies her firm favor of women’s suffrage. In this passage, she uses various types of argument in order to convince the audience via three strategies: appeals to authorities, stylistic choices, rhetorical question, and appeal to emotions.

First of all, Anthony appeals to authorities starting from the second paragraph. In the second paragraph, Anthony uses quotation from the preamble of the Federal Constitution in order to provide evidential support to her thesis statement in the previous paragraph. She argues how it was lawful to vote at the last Presidential election and how it was not a commitment of crime by this quotation from supreme law. Since she refers to Federal Constitution, the United State’s most fundamental principles which should be the highest pursuances, this citation gains a high level of credence. She quotes “We, the people of the Unites States, in order to…… promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of

Anthony, who fights for the women’s rights and suffrage, successfully convinces her audience by using effective strategies of argument. Throughout the speech, she makes stylistic choices within the diction cited from an authority with strength. She also never misses to appeal emotionally to the listeners. At last, she uses a rhetorical question by affirming the pain of women, who suffers from the deprivation of their rights that should have been secured. Anthony justifies her decision of action by articulating with fair