Writing prompt:
Antony mentions the word “right” or “rights” many different times in this excerpt. How does she use and refine this key term over the course of her speech? Use evidence from the passage to support your response. Your writing will be scored on organization, development of ideas, and use of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. At first Anthony’s main focus is the right to vote because she was arrested for voting. And, that this right was guaranteed to her by “National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to Deny.” Next “rights” become something people are born with; they are “God-given.” Anthony points out that she always has had the right to vote because the government doesn’t give rights; she was born with that right. It says in the speech that “when 100 or 1,000,000 people enter into a free government, they don’t barter away their natural rights.” Accordingly, Anthony then turns to the concept of rights as they are defined in the “Declaration of Independence” which shows that governments don’t give rights; they protect rights. Also shown in paragraph 4 line one it say’s “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.” She is saying here that not only are these rights “inalienable” and “natural” and hence not given by governments but that our “grand documents” recognize this. Anthony then links rights to orderly and peaceful government: The Declaration also shows that the government is formed by the “consent of the governed”, which implies that people need the right to vote in order to make laws and to change laws. After establishing these principles about the right to vote, Anthony expands her focus to equal rights for all. It’s clear that women are not treated well by the laws of this country. They are being denied other rights besides the right to vote. She ends this excerpt with the idea that the founding documents show that women and men have the same rights equal political rights and “by the practice of those declarations all class and caste distinction will be abolished bound to the proud platform of equality.”
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