Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight, under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that I thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercise my citizen's right, guarantee to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny (Anthony 270).
             A portion of Susan B. Anthony's speech was given after a crucial time in her life when she had been arrested for illegally voting in the 1872 presidential election. Sarah Grimke and Elizabeth Cady Stanton also fought for equal political, marital, economic, and social rights for women in the middle- to- late 1800's. Grimke wrote, The Pastoral Letters of the General Association of Congregationalist Ministers of Massachusetts, in 1837, which states that Scripture gives equal treatment to women and men. Stanton expressed women's rights on a Constitutional level in her Seneca Falls Declaration of 1848.
             All three of these individuals argue for equal rights for women by applying a similar method for making their arguments: they respond to fallacies asserted by men concerning feminine equality. All of these fallacies are implied or stated positions relating to such things as women's right to participate in preaching or ministry, the right to assemble, free speech, property ownership, domestic affairs, and child custody. But the most important issue is the stripping of political rights from women, particularly the right to vote and the right to serve on a jury.
             In Grimke's Pastoral Letter, she emphasized her idea that women are equal to men in the religious arena. Men have misinterpreted scripture to make women unequal to them in the Christian ministry. She states that "The appropriate duties and influence of women are stated in the New Testament. Those duties are unobtrusive a...