Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE

Woman of the People: The Transformation of Susan B. Anthony and the Post-Civil War Womans Rights Narrative

William R. Upchurch Graduate Student Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE Abstract This paper provides a rhetorical analysis of Susan B. Anthonys Women Want Bread, Not the Ballot speech. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell (1989a) and others have characterized Anthony as an organizer and master of the forensic style. This speech, however, exhibits characteristics of the deliberative genre, and through it Anthony constitutes working-class women as voters through their participation in the rising industrial economy. Anthonys fusion of woman suffrage and labor issues marks her as a proto-populist leader whose style presages that of future populist rhetors. This paper suggests that a broader reading of Anthonys rhetoric complicates our understanding of Anthonys strengths as a rhetor and her role in the post-Civil War womans rights movement.

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE Woman of the People: The Transformation of Susan B. Anthony and the Post-Civil War Womans Rights Narrative Susan B. Anthony is today the most iconic nineteenth-century womans rights leader

thanks to her appearance on a silver dollar coin and a trail of dedicated protgs [who recorded] her contributions in honorific biographies (Dubois & Stanton, 1975, p. 1). Despite her regard among modern scholars and in the popular mind, she is often described as merely a great organizer, business manager, or, as Ellen Carol DuBois (1975) claims, less individualistic and intellectual than her friend and collaborator Elizabeth Cady Stanton (p. 1). Anthony's career as a traveling speaker was short-lived and took place at a time when she and Stanton had been marginalized as radicals by the more moderate woman suffrage activists of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). It is for these reasons, I believe, that the interplay between her two great speeches of the period has been largely ignored by critics of the movement. These speeches, delivered in the early 1870s, are considered by many to be her greatest rhetorical acts.1 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell (1989a) refers to Is It a Crime for a U.S. Citizen to Vote? as a persuasive masterpiece, and compares it to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and Abraham Lincolns Cooper Union address (p. 108). The second speech, Women Want Bread, Not the Ballot, deserves equal attention for its elucidation of key transformative elements present in the development of the womans rights movement and Anthonys role within it. This paper features a look at the less popular of these two speechesthe "Bread" speech. The speech is an important departure for Anthony as well as the woman suffrage movement. For Anthony, it marked the culmination of a period of turmoil, failure, and rejection that left her

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE emotionally exhausted, if resolute. The constitutional claims of the early womans rights movement, epitomized in Elizabeth Cady Stantons earlier arguments for the vote, had been temporarily subsumed into the larger American Equal Rights Association (AERA), an

organization dedicated to extending constitutional rights to women and blacks.2 During the fight over the Fifteenth Amendment, however, Republican politicians and key AERA activists came to believe that the womans rights claims had then been defeated.3 Frustrated, isolated from former allies, and realizing a new strategy was needed if the movement was to avoid being lost in the historic tides of what was termed the negros hour,4 Anthony contrived to register and vote in the 1872 election. She was enacting a revolutionary ideology labeled the New Departure, which was made possible by the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and the arguments of Virginia and Francis Minor. She was subsequently arrested, which led to her trial as a defendant (a notable situation, as all legal challenges over woman suffrage had thus far been made by women as plaintiffs). Virginia Minor was one such plaintiff. She, along with her husband, took her case to the Supreme Court around the same time.5 The failure of the courts to recognize the rights of both Minor and Anthony put to rest the legal claims of women under the Constitution and its fifteen amendments. Through a rhetorical analysis of Anthony's "Crime" and "Bread" speeches, this paper argues that Anthony's rhetoric transformed to constitute different audiences in different ways.6 To this end, I will first set up the rhetorical situation in which Anthony spoke. Then I will chronicle her shift from the forensic address of Crime to the more deliberative mode of Bread. Next I will demonstrate how she utilized a new mode of address in the latter to engage her new audience with arguments from expedience. I will also show how in Bread Anthony challenged gender norms and uses a gender-neutral perspective to constitute working women as

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full citizens. Finally, I will discuss the implications of this new conception of Anthony, including how the speech complicates our understanding of both Anthonys legacy as a womans rights advocate and the characterization of the post-Civil War womans rights movement. Last, this study allows us to characterize Anthony as an early labor leader and to read the text as a protopopulist appeal. I will argue that the growing number of wage-earning women, mostly shut out of the emerging labor and populist movements, gave her an audience beyond that of the white, upper class women she previously addressed. Taking the Public Stage As noted in the introduction, Anthony is often remembered as the organizational leader of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), with Stanton as its fiery intellectual. A broader reading of the history of the post-AERA period as well as Anthonys rhetoric shows that this narrative is perhaps incomplete. While Anthony did work to organize conventions, rent halls, raise funds, and encourage participation in both the abolition and womans rights movements, her speeches and actions in the years between 1870 and 1880 are worth closer examination in order to fully appreciate her role in the womans rights movement. Multiple catalytic events helped galvanize Anthony into action.7 Using these events to illustrate historical context gives a growing sense of the pressures and disappointments Anthony experienced at the time she adopted the Minors arguments. Lloyd Bitzer (1968) says that rhetorical works belong to a class of things which obtain their character from the circumstances of the historic context in which they occur (p. 3). Anthony acted as though there would never be a better time to make an argument for womans voting rights as citizens of the United States. Her experience as an organizer prompted her to decisive action. Decades of failure, however, had also trained her to expect resistance. Belinda Stillion Southard (2006) argues that Anthony [understood] the

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE heightened challenge presented to her as part of the process toward social change (p. 5). I have

identified three catalytic events from 1869 that, taken as a whole, provide insight into Anthonys emergence as an orator on the national stage: a division in the womans rights movement, the failure of her newspaper, and a new line of argument opened up by a pair of activists from Missouri. The first significant event was the schism in the woman suffrage movement that led to the formation of two competing organizations, the NWSA and the AWSA. Tensions had been rising within the AERA over the primacy of black voting rights over those of women for years. During a speaking tour of Kansas in 1867, Anthony and Stanton made the controversial decision to ally themselves with George Francis Train, a pro-slavery, pro-woman suffrage Democrat. The Republican Party, traditionally the party that paid the most attention to woman suffrage arguments, had abandoned its support of women for reasons of political expedience. They believed support for a woman suffrage amendment to the Kansas constitution threatened the passage of the black suffrage amendment. Influential East Coast movement leaders quickly followed suit, raising the cry of the negros hour and counseling patience to women. Anthony and Stanton had come to believe that the two rights were linked by the same principles and thus should be conferred by universal suffrage laws. Any other outcome was unacceptable. Few others agreed, however, and as the campaigns wore on it became clear that Anthony and Stanton would have to either abandon their principles or blaze their own trail. The first entry in Anthonys diary for 1868 illuminates their decision: All the old friends, with scarce an exception, are sure we are wrong. Only time can tell, but I believe we are right and hence bound to succeed (Harper, 1898a, p. 295).

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE The following week, the first issue of The Revolution was published. Stanton, as editor, set the tone for the paper by attacking Republicans and anyone else who insisted that woman must stand back and wait until another class should be enfranchised (Harper, 1898a, p. 323). The next year saw increasingly hostile reactions to Anthony and Stanton's usual circuit of meetings, as some made calls for their expulsion from some of the very societies and

associations they had helped create over the past 25 years. As a result, on May 15, 1869, a group of representatives to the AERA decided to form the NWSA. The membership was all female, and dedicated to advancing the rights of women throughout society, not just on the matter of suffrage. The Revolution was the voice of the NWSA for a short time, but due to several factors it would not remain in print for long (Harper, 1898a). The failure of The Revolution was the second catalytic event that spurred Anthonys transformation. While technically still published into 1870, the paper was troubled from the start, and the end became clear by mid-1869. George Francis Train had ceased supporting the paper on account of his arrest on charges of inciting rebellion in England (a humorous anecdote has Trains accusers using copies of The Revolution he was carrying as evidence against him, without bothering to read their contents). Having lost their primary source of funding before a critical mass of subscribers and advertisers could be developed, the paper found itself in hard times. Anthony once again proved her talent and influence by raising private investment and soliciting contributions to keep the paper running, leaving her little time to contribute to it editorially. Her detractors delighted in these struggles, and taunted Anthony and Stanton publicly in editorials while trying privately to coax them back into the mainstream movement. These twin reactions infuriated Anthony and furthered her resolve to succeed even in the face of mounting debt and dwindling hope. She feared that failure would be ammunition for enemies of womans

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rights. The following letter sent to a cousin reveals the incredible pressure Anthony felt on behalf of her cause: My paper must not, shall not go down . . . I know you will save me from giving the world a chance to say, There is a womans rights failure; even the best of women cant manage business. If I could only die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say amen, but to live and failit would be too terrible to bear. (Harper, 1898a, p. 354) Despite the fact that she worked like a whole plantation of slaves the paper could not be saved (Harper, 1989a, p. 356). It stumbled along until mid-1870 when Anthony was forced to sell it for $1 while retaining $10,000 in debt accrued during its short run. To add insult to injury, AWSA had just started publishing the Womans Journal, which was immensely popular, and in which Anthonys estranged friends and colleagues of a quarter-century of struggle attacked her and Stantons radicalism (Harper, 1898a). The final event that precipitated Anthonys shift in strategy and role in the movement was the presentation of six resolutions on womans constitutional voting rights by Francis and Virginia Minor at a meeting of the Missouri Woman Suffrage Association on October 6, 1869. Anthony was in attendance at this meeting, and she printed the resolutions in The Revolution. So taken was Stanton with this argument for womens legal right to vote that she printed and distributed 10,000 extra copies of the issue at great expense. Here was a chance for Anthony to turn the tables on those who had recently inserted the word male into the Constitution for the first time, because the Minors argument was grounded in the language of the very same Fourteenth Amendment. She began to substitute some of the natural rights language in her speeches and letters with the arguments put forth in these resolutions.8

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE Historians and critics have interpreted her mastery of these argumentsand their prevalence given her increasingly full schedule of speechesin such a way as to pigeonhole them as emblematic of her public discourse (Stillion Southard, 2006, p. 9). Stillion Southard (2006) characterizes Anthonys public discourse as upholding a traditional rhetor-audience relationship, formal, and overtly logical (p. 12). I will argue in this essay that these

characterizations are appropriate when considering Anthonys appeals to a particular audience lawmakers and potential jurorsand that, outside the context of the law, she strategically positioned herself as a womans rights leader moving in a radical new direction. Changing Audiences, Changing Aim Contemporaneous to the development, expression, and enactment of her belief that she was a citizen with full voting rights, Anthony traveled the country giving another kind of speech altogether. Women Want Bread, Not the Ballot was, according to Anthony biographer Ida Husted Harper (1898b), delivered in most of the large cities of the United States between 1870 and 1880 (p. 996). This speech is a departure from Crime and broadens our view of Anthony as a rhetorical and historical figure in the womans rights movement. This speech is different from Crime in several important ways. First, she directly addressed the socio-cultural foundation of the arguments against womans equality. Second, the speech targets working women as a primary audience. In it, Anthony utilizes aspects of the feminine style such as consciousness raising, linguistic scaffolds, and conversational speech to constitute wageearning women as actors in the public sphere.9 Furthermore, these strategies presaged the rhetorical style exhibited by many populist and labor leaders in the following decades (Tonn, 1996). Finally, it makes a deliberative appeal as opposed to a forensic one, more explicitly encouraging women to act on their own behalf.

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Anthonys elucidation of the socio-cultural legacy that bolstered the continued denial of womans rights served to differentiate Bread from Crime. Anthony turned the tables on the gender norms of the day in her speech, providing her the opportunity to forge a bold new approach to the argument for womans rights. These norms were primarily drawn from what has been called the Cult of True Womanhood, or cult of domesticity, which emphasized the four virtues of womanhood: purity, piety, domesticity, and submission. These virtuesall acting primarily in the private spherewere born of the religious, agrarian society of early America.10 They also promoted a limited womanhood ideal available primarily to wealthier, white women who could afford to remain domesticated. So, as more women entered the workforce at the vanguard of industrialism these ideals were at odds with the presence of women in the public sphere. Women who entered the workforce were increasingly affected by laws and taxation, allowing Anthonys cry of no taxation without representation to gain force. "No taxation without representation" provided Anthony with a powerful and deeply ingrained cultural ideal to wield as a weapon in making her legal case. For her to effectively wield that weapon, she had to first help women to view themselves as actors in the public sphere.11 Anthonys appeals in Bread served a constitutive function aimed squarely at her audience of working women. Anthony subtly attempted to further undermine gender norms, and further separate herself from the arguments of AWSA and the Womans Journal, by playing against the assumption that women were morally superior to men. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell (1983) has said that it is difficult to find a rhetorical act in the early movement in which women are not treated as naturally distinctive and superior in some respect (p. 102). Bread is just such an act. During the speech, Anthony plainly states, I believe that by nature men are no more unjust than

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women (Harper, 1898b, p. 1,001). She follows with a set of examples that use gender reversal to clearly illustrate some of the injustices women endure under the current marriage laws. If from the beginning women had maintained the right to rule not only themselves but men also, the latter today doubtless would be occupying the subordinate placeswidowers would be doomed to a life interest of one-third of the family estate; husbands would owe service to their wives, so that every one of you men would be begging your good wives, Please be so kind as to give me ten cents for a cigar. (Harper, 1898b, p. 1,001) By using a strategy in which she places men into womens traditional roles and vice versa, she both demonstrates her claim and uses humor to disarm her male audience so they can internalize her point.12 Later in the speech, she makes a counterclaim that functions as an extension of the numeric arguments made in this speech and in "Crime.": Who can doubt that when the representative women of thought and culture, who are today the moral backbone of our nation, sit in counsel with the best men of the country, higher conditions will be the result? (Harper, 1898b, p. 1,002) Anthonys use of numeric representation served to remind the women in her audience that they were part of a broader community, and helped them to imagine other women as their representatives even if they couldnt envision themselves as rising above their station. The generic shift in the speeches, from forensic to deliberative, is illuminative. Key differences in the two genres help to explain the shift: forensic addresses are always linked to specific events as they seek to inform audiences about something that has happened, and are primarily judicial or legalistic (Campbell, 1989a, p. 117). Deliberative rhetoric, on the other hand, seeks to set forth a public idea before a general audience [and is] on a continuum

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE ranging from a call to understanding to a call to action (Mezo, 1997, p. 164). After the

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conclusions of her trial and Minor v. Happersett, Anthony recognized the limitations of the legal argument as well as the doldrums that the mainstream movement was going through. So, she did as she always did: she does not take pauseshe does not take time to consider the injustice handed downshe does not flinchshe [simply] accepted the challenge (Stillion Southard, 2006, p. 4). The appeal of AWSA and the Womans Journal to the upper class white women that made up Anthonys traditional audience may have spurred her to question her rhetorical strategies and role in the movement at their most fundamental level. With the question of abolition settled by the Civil War and the failure of Stantons radical ideas to attract support, Anthony conceived working women as a new audience and their situation as a new topos for infusing some of her arguments. Both required her to change to a deliberative form in order to address this new audience. Anthony's "Bread" exhibits traits of the deliberative form throughout the speech. The opening line begins with a declaration of its intent, a call to understanding: My purpose tonight is to demonstrate the great historical fact that disfranchisement isdegradation. Wherever, on the face of the globe or on the page of history, you show me a disfranchised class, I will show you a degraded class of labor. (Harper, 1898b, p. 996) This immediately invites her audience to see themselves as she sees them: a class of workers degraded by their lack of a vote. She then goes on to present several examples of this principle, as well as the converse idea that gaining the ballot provides immediate relief for the degraded class. She illustrates this not only by talking about recently enfranchised mineworkers in England but also poor white male laborers in early America and [t]he vast numbers of wage-earning men

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE coming from Europe to this country (Harper, 1898b, p. 999). Her focus on the future benefits of present action is consistent with the deliberative form. Anthony then sets forth a public idea before a general audience by confronting the notions of labor and capital, and the non-economic forces that determine their proper balance. She says:

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The law of capital is to extort the greatest amount of work for the least amount of money; the rule of labor is to do the smallest amount of work for the largest amount of money. Hence there is, and in the nature of things must continue to be, antagonism between the two classes; therefore, neither should be left wholly at the mercy of the otherThere never was, there never can be, a monopoly so fraught with injustice, tyranny and degradation as this monopoly of sex, of all men over all women. (Harper, 1898b, p. 1,000) She spends no time justifying womens participation in the workforce, but simply argues that they currently exist as an inferior class of laborer. In Is It a Crime she observes that women have lived in a condition of servitude in the private sphere of marriage. Here, she extends that argument into the public sphere, including in her constitutive aims the young, unmarried women who made up the majority of the female industrial workforce. She ends the speech with a call to action, once again aimed at this audience of working women. If men possessing the power of the ballot are driven to desperate means to gain their ends, what shall be done by disfranchised women? Denied the ballot[women] must tamely submit to wrong or rise in rebellion against the powers that be.

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE Womens crusades against saloons, brothels and gambling- dens, emptying kegs and bottles into the streets, breaking doors and windows and burning houses, all go to prove that disfranchisement, the denial of

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lawful means to gain desired ends, may drive even women to violations of law and order. (Harper, 1898b, p. 1,003) This description of radical temperance activities serves two purposes: it provides female laborers with a model for how women can take public action even in their degraded state, and it also serves as a warning to those in power, whom she addresses with the following closing lines: Hence to secure both national and domestic tranquility, to establish justice, to carry out the spirit of our Constitution, put into the hands of all women, as you have into those of all men, the ballot, that symbol of perfect equality, that right protective of all other rights. (Harper, 1898b, p. 1,003) Here, Anthony goes back to the ballot as a rhetorical image, reminding the working women in her audience that they stand to gain some thing they can put into [their] hands. This isnt a fight about concepts, but about the reality of their lives. Through her speech the ballot becomes the wage of democracy, and women deserve it as surely as they deserve their weekly pay. The presence of the consciousness raising strategy throughout the Bread speech is also illustrative of her shift to a more deliberative form. This rhetorical strategy is inductivecombines the narrators personal experience with historical research [and whose] conclusions are illustrated by examples which symbolize the experience of all women [in order to arouse] intense reactions and identification (Campbell, 1983, p. 105). It is yet another call to understanding, aiding her in constituting working class women as actors in the public sphere.

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For instance, Anthony tells her audience a story of speaking to the president of a womans collar laundry union in New York: Do you not think if you had been 500 carpenters or 500 masons, you would have succeeded? Certainly, she said, and then she told me of 200 bricklayers who had the year before been on strike and gained every point with their employers. What could have made the difference? Their 200 were but a fraction of that trade, while your 500 absolutely controlled yours. Finally she said, It was because the editors ridiculed and denounced us. Did they ridicule and denounce the bricklayers? No. What did they say about you? Why, that our wages were good enough now, better than those of any other workingwomen except teachers; and if we werent satisfied, we had better go and get married. What the do you think made this difference? After studying over the question awhile she concluded, It must have been because our employers bribed the editors. Couldnt the employers of the bricklayers have bribed the editors? She had never thought of that. (Harper, 1898b, p. 999) This story involves the audience in a conversation through its question and answer structure, inviting them to put themselves in the place of the union president. It also creates identification by illustrating two conditions, at least one of which almost any woman in the audience would have experienced: wage disparity, and ridicule and condescension by men. Reported speech and simulated dialogue are linguistic scaffolds that appear several other times throughout the speech, such as when Anthony pins anticipated rebuttals on the crowd by changing from men say to you say halfway through a list of counterarguments. Mari Boor Tonn (1996) explains that these scaffolds use narrative and inductive structures to free [audiences] from

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ingrained and oppressive social premises [in order to] create empathy, generate self-persuasion, and foster judgment and decisive action as listeners deduce the storys moral and draw connections between the tale and other circumstances (p. 11). Anthony took her arguments directly to women across the country, and did so in a rhetorically inventive way that does not fit into previous notions of her strengths and choices as a rhetor. Breads primary audience also differentiates it from Crime and helps demonstrate Anthonys persuasive range. Her time on the lyceum circuit gave her the opportunity to address a new audience: working women across the country. Though most working women would not have attended her speeches themselves, verbal and written accounts of the speech circulated throughout. Anthony intersperses her speech with leading questions designed to reach the ears of working women, such as this from the beginning of the speech: You remember the old adage, Beggars must not be choosers; they must take what they can get or nothing! That is exactly the position of women in the world of work today; they cannot choose. If they could, do you for a moment believe they would take the subordinate places and the inferior pay? (Harper, 1898b, p. 996) Questions such as these serve to demonstrate to working women that they are complicit in devaluing their place in the public sphere. Anthony further addresses this audience through admonishments about their passivity and lack of intellect, such as when she says, the rank and file are not philosophers, they are not educated to think for themselves, but simply to accept, unquestioned, whatever comes. Mari Boor Tonn (1996) argues that such chiding reflectsirritation [but also] provides a measure against which [an oppressed class] can develop a sense of self (p. 10). Anthony recognizes and demonstrates to her audience that their

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE failure to imagine the power of the vote is in part responsible for their current state of degradation. The repeated use of this strategy throughout the speech indicates Anthonys awareness that the constitutive challenges of addressing working women were different from those she had used in the past. Her choices are characteristic of what has been termed a feminine style of political communication that aims to empower women through more egalitarian strategies and to help

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foster [their] growth toward the capacity for independent action (Dow & Tonn, 1993, p. 297). This strategy represented a striking shift for Anthony, whose previous work had been targeted primarily at middle- and upper-class whites. The immediate audience for Crime, for example, was the potential jurors, registrars, judges, and other judicial workers in the two counties in which Anthonys trial was held. These would all have been privileged white males. In terms of the broader movements, this audience is largely the same as that of previous legal addresses and petitions.13 Cindy Koenig Richards has argued that the speech called on citizens to unify American political practice, precepts, and lawby endorsing womens right to vote (Richards, 2009, p. 6). In this way, even though Crime was born from a revolutionary enactment and ends with a revolutionary call, it is still a plea for the men in power to understand and enforce the rights of women as Anthony envisioned them. Her contemporaneous shift away from logical, forensic arguments aimed at a legal audience can be viewed as preparation to move on in the event of ultimate failurethe rejection of womans citizenship rights by the Supreme Court.14 We can perceive her frustration with the legal debate, as she declares with revolutionary flair, We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote (Stillion Southard, 2006, p. 10). In Bread, on the other hand, Anthony adjusts her tone and strategies to connect with her new audience.

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Anthonys attempt to invigorate the womans rights movement by fusing it with nascent populist and labor movements helped shape the political landscape during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, as happened in Kansas in 1867 and again in the 1890s, adding woman suffrage to movements such as Populism and temperance only made them more vulnerable to defeat (Burkholder, 1989). The more moderate stance adopted by AWSA was equally unsuccessful, however. It wasnt until the AWSA and the NWSA merged in 1890 that the long march to woman suffrage would enter its final stretch, culminating with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Conclusion: Proactive Proto-Populism Bread was a rhetorical reformation that hinted at how Anthony would spend the next three decades: attempting to fuse woman suffrage with the populist and labor movements, and to control the historical record of the womans movement.15 She had attempted to work with labor interests such as the National Labor Union since the end of the Civil War, but the collaboration didnt last. In 1869 she was accused of strike-breaking at a union meeting because she encouraged women to fill vital printing trades while male workers (the only ones allowed into the union) were on strike, ending the alliance. During the following decade, she took her message directly to her audiences in meeting halls around the country with "Bread." By incorporating the language of labor rights into her well publicized and widely attended speeches, she encouraged her audience to think of her in a new lightas a labor leader concerned with the realities of working women. This was in stark contrast to the conceptual argument of natural rights used by the AWSA in pushing for a legal remedy. Anthony was determined to personally bring her radical, broad-based message of womans rights to those who could no longer read it in The Revolution. The failure of that newspaper, partially because of the success of the Womans

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE Journal, had opened the lyceum circuit to Anthony in the first place. The opportunity to

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refashion herself and potentially spread her brand of womans rights to an even larger audience than the AWSA must have reenergized Anthony after the disappointments she faced at the end of the prior decade. When cast in the light of recent arguments about populist rhetoric, Anthonys rhetorical shift marks her as a proto-populist rhetor and a unique voice among womans rights advocates during the 1870s. Michael J. Lee (2006) argues that populism is not a movement, but an argumentative frame containing the consistencies and contours of a sustained political language with roots located in the nations Founding (p. 357). He identifies four themes in the rhetorical form of populist argument [which] are a vocabulary at once of stark pessimism and collective hope [that] highlights the eternal virtue of the Founders vision yet distrusts its current form (Lee, 2006, p. 358). Because of the particular constraints Anthony confronted as a female rhetor, no matter how celebrated, her speeches never blossomed into full-blown populism. She never went so far as to constitute an enemy against which the people should struggle, for example, instead arguing that it was the lack of the ballot that was responsible for the ills of women in America. However, her brilliant use of the feminine style to fuse the deliberative form with natural rights arguments and historical precedent clearly fulfills the general definition of populist rhetoric offered by Lee (2006). Bread also complicates the conventional view of the womans rights movement during this period. Anthonys proto-populist form contradicts Charles Conrads (1981) characterization of post-Civil War womans rights rhetoric, demonstrating how she adapted the best arguments for suffrage to new audiences and new circumstances. Conrad asserts that the rhetoric of the womans movement during this period changed in two ways:

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE (1) assertive expressions of womens experiences were replaced by reactions to the charges made by anti-movement rhetors (2) demands for recognition of the essential humanness of women were supplanted by calls for practical political action. (Conrad, 1981, p. 286) While his evidence for these claims is strong when examining the rhetoric of AWSA and The Womans Journal, it fails to account for Anthonys voice. Neither Is It a Crime nor Bread responds to charges made by anti-movement rhetors, though in the former Anthony does attempt to refute the actions taken by anti-suffrage registrants and police officers. Both have as their core the argument that failing to give women the ballot is a continuing blight on the

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Republic. The second claim is similarly difficult to fit into either of Anthonys major speeches of the period. Encouraging women to vote and encouraging registrars and judges to allow it wasnt practical political action, it was revolutionary. The act was meant to provoke the establishment into either recognizing womans right to vote or denying it, thus exposing the hypocrisy of those who claimed to uphold the illusion of a fully democratic America. Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith (1969) suggest that whatever the outcome, Anthony would win. Either women would gain the ballot, or if not, [the confrontation would] provoke the response that confirms its presuppositions, gratifies the adherents of those presuppositions, and turns the power-enforced victory of the establishment into a symbolic victory for its opponents (Scott & Smith, 1969, p. 8). Women would be forced to confront the depths of their own oppression. Similarly, Anthony was very much concerned with making the case that women are equally as human, and valuable, as men. She argued for the personhood of women directly in Is It a Crime in order to make the case that several constitutions already granted women the right to vote. In Bread, she made more expedient arguments: that women are degraded as long

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE as they are denied the ballot, that Americas potential would remain unfulfilled until they are granted it, and that society would benefit from a larger pool of individuals with full rights and protections under the law. I have attempted to demonstrate how Anthonys rhetoric in the 1870s complicates our understanding of both her contributions to the womans rights movement as well as the movement itself. Her speech in defense of illegal voting and her extra-rhetorical work in organizing and fundraising have been well analyzed and properly placed within the womans rights narrative. However, when we add her other major speech of the period to the mix a new picture emerges. It is a picture of a master rhetorician unleashed by historical catalysts who

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attempted to save the womans rights movement from losing its way in its darkest hour. By using elements of the feminine style in her discourse with working class women, Anthony transformed her historical and philosophical arguments for woman suffrage into a deliberative call to action. Through her work with womens labor organizations and her campaign in Kansas, Anthony came to understand that as womens role in the public sphere expanded, disenfranchisement became an even greater injustice.16 This insight led her to adopt tactics that caused friction within the womans movement, eventually leading to a schism and the formation of the NWSA. Rather than weakening the movement, however, Anthony provided vital intellectual and physical energy at a time when the movement could easily have become moribund.

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE References Bitzer, L. (1968). The rhetorical situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1, 1-14. Burkholder, T. R. (1989). Kansas populism, woman suffrage, and the agrarian myth: A case study in the limits of mythic transcendence. Communication Studies, 40, 292-307.

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Campbell, K. E., McCammon, H. J. (2001). Winning the vote in the west: The political successes of the women's suffrage movements, 1866-1919. Gender and Society, 15, 55-82. Campbell, K. K. (1983). Femininity and feminism: To be or not to be a woman. Communication Quarterly, 31, 101-108. Campbell, K. K. (1989a). Man cannot speak for her: Vol. I: A critical study of early feminist rhetoric. Westport, CT: Praeger. Campbell, K. K. (1989b). Man cannot speak for her: Vol. II: Key texts of the early feminists. Westport, CT: Praeger. Charland, M. (1987). Constitutive rhetoric: The case of the peuple Quebecois. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73, 133-150. Conrad, C. (1981). The transformation of the old feminist movement. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 67, 284-97. Darsey, J. (1991). From gay is good to the scourge of AIDS: The evolution of gay liberation rhetoric, 1977-1990. Communication Studies, 42, 43-66. Dow, B. J., Mari B. T. (1993). Feminine style and political judgment in the rhetoric of Ann Richards. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 79, 286-302. DuBois, E., Stanton, E. C. (1975). On labor and free love: Two unpublished speeches of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Signs, 1, 257-268.

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Gregg, R. B. (1971). The ego-function of the rhetoric of protest. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 4, 7191. Harper, I. H. (1898a). Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony: Vol. 1. Salem: Ayer Company. Harper, I. H. (1898b). Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony: Vol. 2. Salem: Ayer Company. Lee, M. J. (2006). The populist chameleon: The Peoples Party, Huey Long, George Wallace, and the populist argumentative frame. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 92, 355-378. Lutz, A. (1959). Susan B. Anthony. Boston: Beacon Press.
Mezo, R. E. (1997). An adaptation of Aristotle: A note on the types of oratory. Rhetoric Review, 16, 164-165.

Ray, A. G., Richards, C. K. (2007). Inventing citizens, imagining gender justice: The suffrage rhetoric of Virginia and Francis Minor. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 93, 375 402. Richards, C. K. (2009). Susan B. Anthony: Is it a crime for a U.S. citizen to vote? Unpublished manuscript, Northwestern University. Scott, R. L., Smith, D. K. (1969). The rhetoric of confrontation. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 55, 1-8. Stillion Southard, Belinda. (2006). Susan B. Anthony: Militant identity through personal discourse. Paper presented at the meeting of the Susan B. Anthony & the Struggle for Equal Rights Womens History Conference, Rochester, New York.
Tonn, M. B. (1996). Militant motherhood: Labors Mary Harris Mother Jones. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 82, 1-21. Welter, B. (1966). The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860. American Quarterly, 18, 151-174. Zaeske, S. (2002). Signatures of citizenship: The rhetoric of womens anti-slavery petitions. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 88, 147-168.

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE

Footnotes
1

24

I use the following versions of the speeches throughout the paper: Is It a Crime for a U.S.

Citizen to Vote? from Campbell (1989b, pp. 279-290) and Women Want Bread, Not the Ballot! from Harper (1898b, pp. 996-1,003).
2

These constitutional claims centered around natural rights arguments, which stated that women

were persons and therefore held the same rights as men under the U.S. Constitution.
3

Many Republicans and key AERA activists believed that tying womans rights arguments in

with those of the newly freed slaves would sink the prospect of gaining either, so they abandoned the former in order to ensure passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.
4

This phrase was used by abolitionist leaders such as Wendell Philips to argue the case for

excluding woman suffrage from discussions of protecting the voting rights of former slaves after the Civil War. Particularly stinging to Anthony were the strident assertions of Frederick Douglass that voting rights for blacks should be the only matter put before Congress or the states. The subsequent rift led to charges of racism against key members of the womans movement, including Susan B. Anthony.
5

As Ray and Richards (2007) argue, sex and marital status made it impossible for her to bring

suit by herself in a Missouri court (p. 380).

6

This paper embraces the constitutive understanding of rhetoric argued in Charland (1987). This paper adopts the notion of catalytic events to accentuate the driving contextual forces

surrounding Anthonys speeches from Darsey (1991). The four identifying characteristics of catalytic events are that they are historical rather than rhetoricalare nontacticalachieve tremendous significance for the movement and precede rhetorical responses that constitute demonstrably discrete, internally homogenous rhetorical eras (p. 43). Because I am attempting to contextualize a single rhetors strategic shifts rather than examine a broader trend in rhetorical history, I pay little attention to the final characteristic beyond describing those shifts as rhetorical responses to certain events.
8

For more on the Minors resolutions, see Ray and Richards (2007).

Running head: WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE

9

25

For more on the feminine style and consciousness raising, see Campbell (1983) and Dow and

Tonn (1993).
10

For an analysis of the Cult of True Womanhood and its effects on the early womans rights

movement, see Welter (1966).

11

For a discussion on the constitutive effects of womens anti-slavery petitioning, see Zaeske

(2002). I believe Anthonys rhetoric here attempts to build upon that constitutive function.
12

This deflection also allows Anthony to avoid rekindling the divorce debate, which would have

had disastrous results on the reception of her speech. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a vocal advocate for liberalizing divorce laws to protect women, but her arguments were met by accusations of promoting a free love philosophy. It was still a powerful argument in the mid-1870s that would have overshadowed the rest of Anthonys speech in press coverage, and likely resulted in a reversal of her generally lauded status as a traveling speaker during the period.
13

Anthony was well aware that her actions and speeches surrounding her crime of voting would

reach a national audience; likewise her touring speech aimed at working women. It is the shift in her primary audiences that help shape their generic character.
14

This indeed happened, though not with Anthonys case. In Minor v. Happersett (1874) the

Supreme Court denied that citizenship automatically conferred voting rights and that the Federal government had the duty to regulate state voting standards.
15

Anthony and Stanton started writing and editing what would become the six-volume History of

Woman Suffrage in the late 1870s, publishing the first three volumes in 1887.
16

Her appeals also presaged the role of women in populist movements in western states, where

suffrage took hold much earlier than in the east. For more on this, see Campbell and McCammon (2001).