Susan B. Anthony's Famous Speech about the Right to Vote

Susan B. Anthony

In 1870, Susan B. Anthony said that women were people, too, just like men, and she accordingly voted in an election. The legal system called this a crime and had her arrested. 

Anthony then gave a speech to argue that the United States Constitution combined with simple logic to require that women had equal voting rights. Cleverly citing conservatives’ favorite arguments against them, she laid out a convincing, value-laden case for women’s right to vote. She used the nation’s deepest traditions to support her point. She insisted that the United States should live up to its noble values. Using the same legalistic strategy that Abraham Lincoln had mastered, she defined her argument in traditional terms.

Abraham Lincoln and the Definition of “Liberty:” A Lesson for Our Time

To start that process, Anthony quoted the entire preamble to the United States Constitution:

“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Then, Anthony reminded her audience that the Constitution did not give rights only to males, but to people:

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.” [italics added]

Continuing her constitutional argument, Anthony claimed that preventing women from voting (since women are defined as people!) violated the Constitution on multiple grounds:

“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. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity.”

Here, Anthony assumed that her audience was aware that the United States Constitution specifically outlawed the bill of attainder and ex post facto laws.

Pursuing definitions further, Anthony noted that conservatives like to call our system of government a republic, not a democracy. Turning the tables against that position, Anthony argued that those who restricted women’s right to vote wanted neither a democracy nor a republic. Indeed, she denied that those people supported any part of our system of government:

“To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex.”

Then, reducing her opponents’ argument to absurdity, Anthony insisted that to deny the right of vote required her opponents to deny that women are persons. Surely, she noted, not even they would sink that low:

“The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities.”

In this short, brilliant speech, Susan B. Anthony insisted that the United States should live up to the noble values that its founding documents stated but often ignored. Using the same legalistic strategy that Abraham Lincoln had mastered, Anthony defined her argument in traditional terms. Perhaps the most powerful persuasive technique of all is to accept your opponents’ own arguments, and then show that they actually support your side, not theirs.

Fannie Lou Hamer's Voting Rights Speech, "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired"

As the United States of America celebrates Women’s History Month in March 2026, let us pause to remember, not only women’s many accomplishments, but also the endless struggle for the equality of all women and all persons. As politicians today try to adopt the so-called SAVE Act, which tries to improve voting security but imposes greater paperwork requirements on married women’s voting rights than on men’s, let us remember that the only thing separating us from freedom is a moment of tyranny.

by William D. Harpine

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Research Note:

First, the appeal tradition is not necessarily a fallacy; it depends on the tradition. Some traditions are good and some are bad. Although some things that used to be good have grown obsolete, other old things remain the best. Anthony’s argument was that the people who oppose women’s voting pretended to be traditional when they had, in fact, rejected United States of America’s traditional values. It is a powerful argument.

Second, the debate strategy of reductio ad absurdum uses the simple tactic of taking a seemingly reasonable argument to its logical conclusion. This classic technique can prove that things that only seem to be reasonable are in fact faulty. Anthony applied that strategy to perfection.

For more about fallacies, there is still no better source than the work of philosopher Howard Kahane, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, which I often used as a textbook in my debate classes.

To understand the power of arguments from definition, one must study the great conservative rhetorical theorist Richard Weaver, especially his groundbreaking work, The Ethics of Rhetoric.

Copyright © 2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Susan B. Anthony, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Sojourner Truth in 1867: Keep the Thing Stirring!

Sojourner Truth

“I feel,” said Sojourner Truth, “that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man.”

On May 9, 1867, Sojourner Truth, a former slave and famous abolitionist speaker, pressed for women’s economic rights in a metaphor-filled speech. She was speaking at the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association, held at the Church of the Puritans in New York City. She spoke in metaphors to accentuate women's rights.

As she spoke, such metaphors as weeding the garden, riding horses, and healing a knife wound expressed the path toward economic equality. Metaphors, which link seemingly unrelated concepts, strike to our deepest feelings. Sojourner Truth’s speech about justice for women surely seemed radical in 1867. Yet, the problems of justice and freedom that she described in 1867 still plague the United States, indeed the world, even to this day. Indeed, just last year, the Pew Foundation found that, “even as women have continued to outpace men in educational attainment, the pay gap has been stuck in a holding pattern since 2002, ranging from 80 to 85 cents to the dollar.”

As she began, standing to applause, Sojourner Truth compared the oppression of women to the recent abolition of slavery:

“My friends, I am rejoiced that you are glad, but I don’t know how you will feel when I get through. I come from another field—the country of the slave. They have got their liberty—so much good luck to have slavery partly destroyed; not entirely. I want it root and branch destroyed.”

That was a metaphor.  Any gardener, then or now, knows that it is never enough to pull the leaves. Only when the weed has been destroyed, as Sojourner Truth said, “root and branch,” do we know that it will never grow back. Now that chattel slavery had been abolished, Sojourner Truth argued that it was time to push for women’s rights. She made her next point with a metaphor about ice fishing. A New Yorker, she knew that ice fishing requires one not only to break the ice, but to keep stirring to prevent the pond from freezing over again:

“I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked.”

Church of the Pilgrims

The speaker had already warned that the audience might not be happy about everything he had to say. The end of the Civil War and the destruction of legalized slavery was a massive blow for freedom. It was, she said, not enough: not until women achieved the same rights as men. 

And, she said, it was not enough to talk about men’s rights:

“There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women,” Sojourner Truth stated as she pushed for women’s rights. 

“Stir” continued the idea of “stirring” the ice. As a true agitator, Sojourner Truth sought to continue agitation until women, including freed women, had the same rights as men. Otherwise, she pointed out, women’s lot will not have improved at all:

“… and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Progressive Traditionalist. Will We Live up to Our Values?

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Fourth of July Speech and the Christian Right

A master, of course, demands work without pay. That is not only a moral fault, but also an economic incentive. That is why it made sense when Sojourner Truth recounted the metaphorical chains that still held women to unequal pay for equal work:

“I suppose I am kept here because something remains for me to do, I suppose I am yet to help to break the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German women.”

That is, just like a modern feminist, Sojourner Truth pointed out that women “did not get as much pay.” The problem that she alleged was that while, people viewed the end of slavery as a great triumph, they felt content—too content—to rest without fighting all injustice. Still comparing the oppression of women to slavery, she said:

“You [presumably speaking to men in the audience] have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.”

It will feel all the better? Sojourner Truth harshly told the nation to get over their pain, to understand that everything would be better if the nation could heal: again, the speaker’s metaphor drove home a deeper reality. Yes, it hurts to give up power, but, yes again, a nation that heals will be better off. “It will feel all the better,” she said.

Finally, noting that nobody at the conference had been singing, Sojourner Truth said:

“I am going to talk several times while I am here; so now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.”

After singing the old standard, “We Are Going Home,” she reminded the audience that, before they get to heaven, “first do all we have to do here.”

As the audience listened to her sing, Sojourner Truth had already compared the unequal treatment of women to chattel slavery, spoken against the bonds that unjustly restrict women, and propounded metaphors about everyday life: cracking the ice, breaking chains, turning loose of the reins of injustice, and healing the cuts. She reduced the problem to basic economics: equal pay for equal work. Anything less was trickle-down slavery. And she sang.

The ultimate evil of slavery, of course, is that masters force enslaved Americans to work under conditions of unfathomable cruelty, with no control over their destiny, and without compensation. The institution of slavery continued for centuries because masters gained such a huge economic advantage from unpaid labor. Slavery’s wickedness was a moral failing, but economic gain was its obvious cause. 

In her 1867 speech, Sojourner Truth pointed out the continuing injustice that occurred when women are oppressed economically. Her metaphors brought the injustice to life.

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Research note:

1. It is often surprisingly hard to get accurate texts of even the most famous speeches. Sojourner Truth’s 1851 Akron, Ohio speech, “Aren’t I a Woman?” is more famous. However, communication scholars have known for many years that the published text of “Aren’t I a Woman?” is not accurate. Sojourner Truth’s 1867 speech, which I discuss in this blog post, was recorded by a shorthand reporter, and so the text probably comes reasonably close to what she said and gives us a better idea of her actual speaking style.

2. Scholars have given many excellent discussions of the role of metaphors in rhetoric. In his ground-breaking book, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, I. A. Richards argues that all language is basically metaphorical. For example, when we talk about “the leg of the table,” we know perfectly well that tables don’t really have legs. It’s a metaphor. Richards showed that metaphors can carry literal and emotional meaning. Anyway, for people who want to learn more about metaphors and rhetoric, Richards’ book is probably a good place to start. 

by William D. Harpine

Copyright © 2024, William D. Harpine

Image of Sojourner Truth, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of the The Church of the Pilgrims, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons