Week 7

 Susan B Anthony's Civil Disobedience (Natural Rights)


In 1872, Susan B Anthony went on a barnstorming speaking tour throughout the 29 and 21 towns and villages of Monroe and Ontario County. While opinion polling did not exist in the late 19th century, her speechifying was effective enough for the prosecution to transfer her to the United States Circuit Court at Canandaigua for a less sympathetic jury to hear her case.

 Susan B Anthony's speech and the case for disobedience is already persuasive enough with her title, but what set apart her rhetoric from standard suffragette beliefs was her arguments rooted in the Natural Rights ingrained in the constitution. Despite advocating for a government intervention to change the law an existing law (and legitimize positive action in an age of negative liberty), Ms. Anthony calls for women to vote used Natural Rights and old negative libertarian arguments that appealed to the average American's skeptical dispensation against the government.

By first accepting and restating that 

"Nor can you find a word in any of the grand documents left us by the fathers that assumes for government the power to create or to confer rights. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the constitutions of the several states and the organic laws of the territories, all alike propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights." 

She skillfully extends the meaning and the applicability of natural rights to women's suffrage. She is not asking for the government to GRANT HER VOTING RIGHT. Instead, she believes WOMEN ALREADY HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE. She tells the audience her demands after being liberated from her misconceptions. 

"We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote. We appeal to the women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected "citizen's right to vote." We appeal to the inspectors of election everywhere to receive the votes of all United States citizens as it is their duty to do."  

In my opinion, Susan B Anthony uses Natural rights to justify her civil disobedience for political and philosophical purposes. The former helps persuades more conservative and classically liberally minded men and women to understand the perspectives of women who simply want to vote after being societally, politically, and economically disenfranchised and excluded. The latter serves to give civil disobedience a higher call to a purpose beyond causing annoyance for authority or fulfillment for self. If men and women can't exercise the rights guaranteed by god because of the statutes, what other way is there to practice them once more in peace? 

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