A Rhetorical Analysis Of Benjamin Banneker's Letter

511 Words2 Pages

Slavery happened once in this country before. Imagine if it was still going on to this day, that would make you feel sick in your stomach and make you go crazy. There have been many views on why slavery should be abolished. He was a son of former slaves, his ancestors had been in slavery for generations during these horrible times. A person who gave a great reasoning for this was Benjamin Banneker. In 1971, Banneker was brave enough to write to the Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson about his negative points on slavery. In his letter he showed lots of repetition, diction, and tone to argue against slavery on why it should be abolished.
In his letter, he uses the word “sir” many times throughout this piece. He first starts it off when he refers Jefferson to “sir” and it seems to be like a pattern of repetition because he always has the word “sir” in the first few words of his upcoming paragraphs, the examples of this in his letter were “this sir”, and “here, sir”. This shows that Banneker had respect for Jefferson because he is using is as a polite way of addressing him. Since Banneker is continually saying “sir” it dignifies what kind of person Thomas Jefferson is, which means that he is a polite and well mannered. …show more content…

The words “miraculous”, “providential” and “preservation” are all complex and carry emotional meaning. What Banneker means by this quote is that when you have freedom it is amazing and you want to keep it at that state. His appeals to Jefferson’s feelings are obvious when he later writes, “...you cannot but acknowledge that the present freedom and tranquility. Here he appeals to Jefferson’s feeling of mercy and hopes to convince him of the similarities between slaves and the US colonists before the

Open Document