ACTIVITY
2.15
Taking a Stand on Legal Issues
Learning Strategies:
Marking the Text, Close
Reading
Learning Targets
• Analyze the use of rhetorical appeals in argument.
• Compare and contrast how different writers approach a subject or an issue.
Using Rhetorical Appeals
My Notes
You have learned how writers use ethos, pathos, and logos to appeal to readers.
In argumentative texts, reasoning should primarily be based on ethos and logos.
However, pathos can be a strong appeal as part of an argument.
Before Reading
1.Read the following quote from Chief Joseph. What rhetorical appeal is he using?
“Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade
where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of
my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself—and I will obey every law or
submit to the penalty.”
During Reading
2.As you read the short speech, think about its brevity yet great impact.
Speech
On Surrender
at Bear Paw Mountain, 1877
by Chief Joseph
Tell General Howard that I know his heart. What he told me before I have in my heart.
I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead, Tu-hul-hil-sote is
dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who now say yes or no. He who
led the young men [Joseph’s brother Alikut] is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets.
The little children are freezing to death. My people—some of them have run away to
the hills and have no blankets and no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps
freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of
them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs, my heart
is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.
150 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 10
© 2014 College Board. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Chief Joseph (1840–1904) was the leader of a band of the Nez Percé people,
originally living in the Wallowa Valley in what is now Oregon. During years of
stuggle against whites who wanted their lands and broken promises from the
federal government, Chief Joseph led his people in many battles to preserve
their lands. On a desperate retreat toward Canada, Chief Joseph and his band
were fighting the Army and the weather, and he finally surrendered in the Bear
Paw Mountains of Montana.
ACTIVITY 2.15
continued
After Reading
My Notes
3.What is the primary rhetorical appeal that Chief Joseph uses in this speech?
Give examples and explain their appeal.
4.What is the tone of the speech? Explain.
About the Author
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1905) became a prominent leader for women’s suffrage, giving speeches in both the United States and Europe. With Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, she created and produced The Revolution, a weekly publication
that lobbied for women’s rights. The newspaper’s motto was “Men their rights,
and nothing more; women their rights, and nothing less.” After lobbying for
the right to vote for many years, in 1872 Anthony took matters into her own
hands and voted illegally in the presidential election. Anthony was arrested
and unsuccessfully fought the charges. She was fined $100, which she never
paid. Anthony delivered this address to explain her own civil disobedience.
Key ideas and details
What is Anthony’s claim?
What evidence does she
use to support her claim?
© 2014 College Board. All rights reserved.
Speech
On Women’s
Right to Vote
by Susan B. Anthony
Philadelphia 1872
Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for
the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having
a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus
voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s rights,
guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond
the power of any state to deny.
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, 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.
Unit 2 • Cultural Perspectives 151
ACTIVITY 2.15
Taking a Stand on Legal Issues
continued
My Notes
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. And we formed it, not to give the
blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of
our posterity, but to the whole people—women as well as men. And it is a downright
mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they
are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democraticrepublican government—the ballot.
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.
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; the most hateful aristocracy ever established
on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An
oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy
of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of
sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother
and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household—which ordains all men
sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every
home of the nation. Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a
person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.
After Reading
5.Cite evidence that Anthony uses to support her claim.
6.What rhetorical appeals does Anthony use in this speech? Give examples.
Check Your Understanding
Explain how each of the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos might be
used to create an effective argument.
152 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 10
© 2014 College Board. All rights reserved.
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. Hence,
every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several
states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.