Summary Of The Fundamental Principal Of A Republic By Anna Howard Shaw

Amiah Terrell

Walls 3

Gifted World Literature

13 March, 2016

Inconsistency in Strongly Held Beliefs Four years after Anna Howard Shaw gave her famous speech, "The Fundamental Principal of a Republic", women gained the right to vote everywhere in the United States. Suffragists had been working to gain this fundamental right for years, but had been shot down by the supreme court or other U.S government every time. Individual states had granted some voting rights to women, but would have only been able to vote in state elections previous to 1919. Anna Shaw was in the cutting edge of the suffragists movement come the 20th century, especially in years near 1919, crucial years when orators were a critical part of convincing the masses to support

When she does use pathos, she accompanies it with uses of logic and fundamentally relatable situations. One of the most emotionally appealing statements she made in her entire speech was her reference to the voting techniques she saw as a child, and how terrible they were. She uses this concept to show how the unfairness of males being able to vote and women not caused pain and a general sense of not truly being free. To balance out her use of emotional appeal in reference to the human struggle, she argues that "when we take so much pains to adapt the ballot to the male intelligence of the United States, we should be very humble when we talk about female ignorance" (Shaw). She not only makes an emotional appeal to women by using a blanket statement to say women are not ignorant, but also negates the possibility of an anti-suffragist saying she is being emotionally unreasonable. She negated this argument by clearly stating the facts of incongruence between male accommodations and the fear that women will have to be accommodated for. To provide insight into her personal life, Shaw informed her audience that she "lived in the slums of Boston for three years and [she knows] the need of juries of mothers" (Shaw). She is referring to the likelihood that mothers would provide more harsh scrutiny towards violent criminals than men would, and argues this to be true because of her background. Having lived in the slums of Boston, she was likely to have seen many instances of evil in her life, something that the majority of Americans in her time experienced with her as well. She first establishes her sympathetic view of the world as a child, then asserts her argument in a way people will agree with it because most of them know of the profound love mothers hold for their children and the empathy towards others because of that deep