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I ' Essential Issues, Essential Texts

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Jack Seizer The Pennsylvania State University

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PEINGUIN ACADEMICS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Argument in America ; essential issues, essential texts / [compiled by] Jack Selzer. '

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-321-17278-7 1. Persuasion (RhetoricJ-Problems, exercises, etc. 2. English language-

Rhetoric-Problems, exercises, etc. 3. Report writing-Problems, exercises, etc. 4. College readers. 5. American essays. I. Selzer, Jack.

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2003065709 '

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Contents

Contents by Argumentative Type xi Preface xvii Introduction 1

The Environment 5 Introduction 5 James Fenlmore Cooper

The Slaughter of the Pigeons 8 Thomas Cole

Schroon Lake 1846 15 Carleton Watkins

Photos ofYosemite 16 John Muir

Save the Hetch Hetchy Valley! 19 Photos of Hetch Hetchy Valley 27 Aldo Leopold

The Land Ethic 29 William Cronon

The Trouble with Wilderness 46 Rachel Carson

Chapters 1 and 2 from Silent Spring 74

V

262 • Struggles for Liberation: Slavery, Women ’s Rights, Civil Rights

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) is widely recognized as a central figure in the “first generation” of the women’s movement, despite the fact that she had seven children to raise while the movement was getting started in the 1840s. Stanton, along with Lucretia Mott (a Quaker activist from Philadelphia), began planning the 1848 Seneca Falls Con­ vention after they were denied entry to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. The Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention was a watershed moment in the history of the women’s movement, for the meeting and the ideas that emergedfi'om it were widely reported (and widely criticized). Like Thomas Jefferson before her, Stanton drafted an original version of the Declaration that was ratified with minor changes by conference dele­ gates. Stanton remained active in the fight for extension of rights to women throughout the remainder of her life, although oftentimes she needed to veil her identity by writing speeches for others, including for Susan B. Anthony, with whom she worked (sometimes more cordially than other times) up until her death in 1902. Stanton aho coedited a women’s rights newspaper, The Revolution (1868-1870), and served as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1869 to 1892. Many subsequent women’s activists consider Elizabeth Cady Stanton to be the first and perhaps most influential theorist of women s legal, social, eco­ nomic, and religious rights in the history of women s rights in America.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Seneca Falls Declaration

1. Declaration of Sentiments When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the eartli a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a de­

Euzabeth Cady Stanton The Seneca Falb Declaration • 263

cent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should de­ clare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain in- ahenable rights; that among these are Hfe, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, de­ riving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolislring the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such govern­ ment, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the estabhshment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inahenable right to the elec­ tive franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men, both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective fran­ chise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legisla­ tion, he has oppressed her on all sides.

264 • Struggles for Liberation: Slaveiy^ Women^s Rights^ Civil Rights

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she

earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband.

10 In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master, the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the su­ premacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to 'support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remunera­ tion. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theol­ ogy, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the faciHties for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

i.'i He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from tlie ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a differ­ ent code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies

Euzabeth Cady Stantox 77ie Seneca/a//,? Z)ec/araiion • 265

which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her con­ science and to her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confi­ dence m her own powers, to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject Hfe.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation [and] in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shaU use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.

2. Resolutions WHEREAS, The great precept of nature is conceded to be, that “man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness.” Blackstone in his Commentaries remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated hy God himself, is of course superior in obliga­ tion to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at a times; no human laws are of any vahdity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and all their validity, Md all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original- therefore, ’

Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of

266 • Struggles for Liberation: Slavery, Women's Rights, Civil Rights

nature and of no validity, for this is “superior in obligation to any other.”

Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Resolved, That woman is man’s equal, was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer pub­ lish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all tlie rights they want.

Resolved, That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellec­ tual superioritv, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is pre­ eminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach, as she has an opportunity, in all religious assemblies.

Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage, by their atten­ dance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the

circus.

Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circum­ scribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted appheation of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the erdarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Elizabktii CADvSTAvroN The Seneca Falls Declaration • 267

Resolved, That the equality of human rights results neccssarilv from the fact of the identíty of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.

Resolved, therefore. That, being invested by the Creator udth the same capabdities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their ex­ ercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by ever>’ righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentahties proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth growing out of the di­ vinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modem or wearing the hoarv sanction of antiq­ uity, is to be regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.

Resolved, That the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zeal­ ous and unthing efforts of bodi men and women, for the overthrow' of the monopoly of the pulj)it, and for the securing to women an equal participation with men in the various trades, professions, and com- merce.

Questions for Discussion How does imitating the Declaration of Independence help Cadys argurnenl?

What grievances articulated in the Declaration are still at issue today?

270 • Struggles for Liberation: Slavery, Women's Rights, Civil Rights

Like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who wrote a number of Anthony’s speeches, Susan B. Anthony (1820-1S96) was one of the most prominent figures in the fight for women’s rights in the nineteenth centuiy. Her career closely parallels Stanton’s, and the two coedited The Revolution (a women’s rights newspaper) although Anthony was afar more public and contro­ versial figure. Although her main cause was suffrage (she served with Stanton on the National Woman Suffrage Association and headed up that organization between 1892 and 1900), she also spoke and worked on be­ half of temperance, abolitionism, educational reform, and workplace re­ form (including the right of women to form unions). Anthony delivered the following speech (shortened here for reasons of space) a number of times after she was arrested in New York State and fined $100 for illegally vot­ ing in the 1872 presidential election. In it, she addresses her fellow citi­ zens as if they were jurors.

Susan B. Anthony

On Women’s Right to Suffrage

Friends and Fellow-citizens: I stand before you tonight, under indict­ ment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last Presidential elec­ tion, 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, hut, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s right, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.

Our democratic-repubhcan government is based on the idea of the natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and a vote in making and executing the laws. We assert the province of govern­ ment to he to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property. And when 100 or 1,000,000 people enter into a free govern­ ment, they do not barter away their natural rights; they simply pledge themselves to protect each other in the enjoyment of them, through prescrihed judicial and legislative tribunals. They agree to abandon

SuSAX B. AnT}]ONV On Women’s Right lo Suffrage • 271

the methods of brute force in the adjustment of their differences, and adopt tliose of civilization.

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 con­ fer 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 ex­ ercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights.

All men are created equal, and endowed by tlieir Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are hfe, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, nor exclu­ sion of any class from their full and equal enjoyment. Here is pro­ nounced the right of aü men, and “consequently,” as the Quaker preacher said, of all women,” to a voice in the government.

Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is here clearly implied. For however destructive to their happiness this government might be­ come, a disfranchised class could neither alter nor abolish it, nor insti­ tute a new one, except by the old brute force method of insurrection and rebellion. One-half of the people of this nation today are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces taxation without representa- tion, that compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent, that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers, that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of then- own persons, wages and children,—are this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the declarations of the framers of this government, every one of which was based on the immutable principle of equal rights to all.

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 tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the bless­ ings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.

272 • Struggles for Liberation: Slavery, tVomen's Rights, Civil Rights

It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this 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 otir posterity, but to the whole people—^women as well as men. And it is downright mock­ ery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty wltile they arc denied the use of the only means of securing them pro­ vided bv this democratic-republican 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 with­ held from women and their female posterity. To them, this government has no jusi 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 ojigarchs 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. And this most odious aristoc­ racy exists, too, in the face of Section 4, of Article 4, which says: “1 he United States shall guarantee to every State in the f .nion a Republican form of government. ”

What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference between ihe inhabi­ tants of a monarchical and those of a republican form of government, save that in the monarchical the people are subjects, helpless, power­ less, bound to obey laws made by superiors—while in the republican, the people are citizens, iqjlividual sovereigns, all clothed with cqttal power, to make and umnake both their laws and law makers, and the moment you deprive a person of his right to voice in the government, you degrade him from the status of a citizen of the republic, to that of a subject, and it matters very little to liim whetlter his monarch be an individual tyrant, as is the Czar of Russia, or a 15,000,000 headed monster, as here in the United States; he is a powerless subject, serf or slave; not a free and independent citizen in any sense.

10 But, it is urged, the use of the masculine pronouns he, his, and him, in all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were

Sl'SAX B. Antiiont On Women''s Right to Suffrage * 273

meant to be included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the lettei of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent, and accept the other horn of the dilemma, which would compel you to exempt women from taxation for the support of the govermnent. and from penalties for the violation of laws.

In all the penalties and burdens of the government, (except the military.) women are reckoned as citizens, equally with men. Also, in all the privileges and immunities, save those of the jury box and ballot box, the two fundamental privileges on which rest all the others. The United States government not only taxes, fines, imprisons and hangs women, but it allows them to pre-empt lands, register ships, and take out passport and naturalization papers. . . .

But. whatever room there was for a doubt, under the old regime, the adoption of the fourteenth amendment settled that question for­ ever, in its first sentence: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

And the second settles the equal status of all persons—all citizens: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privi­

leges or immunities of citizens; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty' or property, vatliout due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

1 he 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 fhey are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens, and no State has a right to make any new 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 to-day null and void, precisely as is every one against negroes.

5 Is the right to vote one of the privileges or imimmitics of citizens? 1 think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state prisoners will all agree with me, that it is not only one of tliem, but the one without which all the others are nothing. Seek first the kingdom of the ballot, and all things else shall be given thee, is the political injunction.

And it is upon tliis just interpretation of the United States Constitution that our National Woman Suffrage Association, which celebrates the twenty-filth anniversary of the woman’s rights move­ ment in New York on the 6th of May next, has based all its arguments and action the past five vears.

We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote. We appeal to the women cve,r\’v'herc to exercise their too Ion»

* O

274 * Struggles for Liberation: Slavery, IVomens Rights, Civil Right:

neglected -‘citizen’s right to vote."’ We appeal to the inspectors of elec­ tion eveiywhere to receive the votes of all United States citizens as it is their duty to do. We appeal to United States commissioners and mar­ shals to arrest the inspectors who reject the names and votes of United States citizens, as it is their duty to do, and leave those alone who, like our eighth ward inspectors, perform their duties faithfully and well.

We ask the juries to fail to return verdicts of “guilty” against hon­ est, law-abiding, tax-paying United States citizens for offering their votes at our elections. Or against intelligent, worthy young men, in­ spectors of elections, for receiving and counting such citizens’ votes.

We ask the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law. and wherever there is room for a doubt to give its benefit on the side of liberty and equal rights to women, remembering that “the true rule of interpretation under our national Constitution, especially smee its amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional, evervthing against human rights is unconstitutional.’

And it is on this fine that we propose to fight our battle for the bal­ lot—all peaceablv, but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before the law.

Questions for Discussion How would you characterize Anthony’s tactics? What fonns of evidence does she favor? Why are these forms best suited to her likely audience?

What kind of response is Anthony trying to elicit from her audience?

Visual Arguments: The Suffrage Movement • 275

The suffrage movement for women developed alongside improvements in literacy and a consequent expansion in the number of newspapers and magazines. Hence the movement was a frequent subject for both satire and support not only by writers but by illustrators, photographers, and cartoonists. Posters and political cartoons at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth represented specific events and argued about the issue. In the process, cartoonists and engravers offered images of men and women in contemporary dress in the midst of daily ac- twities: Images of hen-pecked men and domineering ivomen reflected male fears about the loss of power—and established stereotypes about ivomen 's liberation that persist in visual rhetoric today.

Visual Arguments: The Suffrage Movement

This lithograph by the famous and prolific Currier and Ives depicts a crowd of women joining the National Woman

Suffrage Association. The women are shown voting for Susan Sharp Tongue (Susan B. Anthony) at a table

supervised by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.