Analysis Of The Book ' Clotel Or The President's Daughter '

In 1791 Benjamin Banneker, the son of former slaves, astronomer, and almanac author, wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson, in a courteous but forceful manner, challenging the framer of the Declaration of Independence and secretary of state on the topics of race and freedom. He touches on the topics of the way blacks were treated and seen by the common white American citizen and how it is an injustice. In his letter, Banneker uses ethos, logos, pathos, repetition, syntax, and juxtaposition to sympathize with Jefferson about former hardships to perhaps reach common ground.

In Benjamin Banneker’s letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1791, soon after the U.S.’s separation from Britain, he uses allusions and juxtaposition in describing the existence of slavery to show Jefferson that while he claims to follow American values of freedom and equality, he does not believe in allowing those same values to African Americans. Thomas Jefferson, the then secretary of state, is persuaded to put himself in the slaves’ shoes and have more compassion towards their oppression.

The letter does a wonderful job of including allusions in the text in order to get Jefferson thinking about the past and his past experience. Banneker asks Jefferson to recall when the British “enslaved” the colonists and how that made him feel in an effort to make Jefferson imagine how Banneker must feel. Banneker also alludes to the Declaration of Independence, which Jefferson wrote, in order to use his own words to point out his hypocrisy.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of African slavery in America in the antebellum by late eighteenth century and before the antebellum crisis as discussed in Paul Finkelman’s book: Defending Slavery.

In The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States, Berlin draws attention to various parts of anti-slavery resistance that often escape consideration. He emphasizes the efforts of African Americans themselves. Berlin brings together main ideas, events, and people who made slave emancipation in the U.S. possible and that American freedom as a complex, disputed process. The author is not focused on speeches, written arguments, and petitions against slavery but with how slaves and free blacks took steps to permanently pull apart forced servitude in the face of crushing hostility. Author Glenn David Brasher of The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom zooms in and focuses

First, Benjamin Banneker reasons African Americans are equal to white men in order to argue that slavery is morally wrong. For example, through the repetition of the word the ‘Sir’, Banneker not only shows respect towards Thomas Jefferson, but portrays himself as someone knowledgeable. This helps Banneker argue that is slavery is morally wrong because it shatters the notion of African Americans being inferior to white people due to Banneker, who is an African American, writing a letter in a dignified manner. Also, it helps the argument by appealing to Thomas Jefferson’s ego and sense of worth. The repetition of ‘sir’ makes it more difficult for Jefferson to become angry at Banneker for being insolent because it doesn’t antagonize Jefferson, but recognizes the difference in authority and position between Banneker and Jefferson while showing that Banneker himself, who is an African American, is capable and educated. Through sentences “… you have mercifully received and that is the peculiar blessing of heaven”, “blessings to which you were entitled by nature”, and “… benevolence of the Father of mankind and of equal and impartial distribution of those right…” Mr. Banneker appeals to Jefferson through religion. This religious appeal aids the argument that slavery is wrong because it works as the premise to a syllogism; God has made all men equal, African Americans and white people are men, so they are equal. For Jefferson to dispute this argument, he would have to defy the premise of his own Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are create equal…”) which would mean the loss of the justification Americans had to declare independence from Great Britain. Also, Banneker speaks to Jefferson’s own values as a religious man by arguing that he is opposing God’s goodwill in the

Douglass began his speech to the audience by asking a series of rhetorical questions in addition to the use of sarcasm. He referred to the Declaration of Independence as “that” instead of “the” Declaration stressing a separation between African-Americans and the freemen of the United States. He extended the use of his rhetoric by asking, “What have I or those, I represent, to do with your national independence?” Slaves, whose freedom is denied, do not share other Americans’ patriotic feelings regarding the Fourth of July. His use of these rhetorical questions was valid because it separated Douglass as a different man than the rest of his white audience. Furthermore, Douglass asked, "Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty?" He indicated that people knew in their hearts that all were entitled to freedom. Douglass demonstrated sarcasm in this principle of freedom, almost as if the aforementioned rhetorical question shouldn’t need to be stated. He further declared that the stigma separating free whites and enslaved African-Americans was blatantly foolish.

By supporting the Revolutionaries actions to break free from British Rule, Douglass alluded to the similar fight that the American population faced to attain the same liberty that white citizens had. With the same courage the Founding Fathers had to create a free country, the American generation of 1852 faced a similar test to uphold the values of the Declaration of Independence, and liberate American slaves.7 After applauding the Founding Fathers, Douglass acknowledges that the emphasis of his speech is not to give praise, but to call on America to act on it’s own failures and begin to faithfully fulfill the nations oath.8 He asks his audience, “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us [African Americans]?”9 This rhetorical question Douglass presents, challenges America to reevaluate what they are truly celebrating on the Fourth of July, for it is surely not the freedom in which they claim to have achieved. Douglass asserts that asking black people to rejoice in the “shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery”10 and do not respect the courage, and steps the Founding Fathers took to create a free, liberated nation.11

Benjamin Banneker, the son of former slaves, writes to Thomas Jefferson in 1791 in an effort to denounce slavery in the United States. His letter was written in an era during a time which slavery was commonly practiced in the United States. In his appeals, Benjamin touches on topics of the cruel way blacks were treated and attempts to persuade Thomas Jefferson to reconsider his tolerance of such a heartless system. In his letter, Banneker utilizes ethos, pathos, logos, textual citation, and textual citation to relate to Jefferson about past hardships to possibly accomplish shared view.

It is said that slavery is a stain on our country’s past. The topic of slavery was and still is a controversy in which equality is a struggle to obtain. However, what occurred in the past created the nation that lives on today. Benjamin Banneker was one man who stood out in the efforts to end slavery. He did so in writing a strongly worded letter to Thomas Jefferson that exclaimed his opinions and feelings. Banneker used an appeal to pathos, repetition, and religious appeals to argue against slavery.

In the midst of a long passage on black people in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson (who sniffed that [Phyllis] Wheatley’s poetry was “below the dignity of criticism”) proposed that black inferiority- “in the endowment of both body and mind”- might be an unchangeable law of nature. (181)

He has shown that the “blessings in which you, this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common” (124). With the purpose of his speech firmly defined, he now has the liberty to expound upon the true evil of slavery that lurks in the shadow of hypocrisy. He employs the satirical technique of ridicule to expose the ugly nature of enslavement with equally ugly diction. Douglass’ disapproval ranges from “hideous” to “revolting” to “an outrage”, and culminates in the assertion that slavery is the “greatest sin and shame of America” (125). A far cry from the almost reverent tone of his opening statements, Douglass led his audience from the throes of a Fourth of July celebration to an intense degradation of the freedom they so

Slavery is a contradictory subject in American history because “one hears…of the staid and gentle patriarchy, the wide and sleepy plantations with lord and retainers, ease and happiness; [while] on the other hand on hears of barbarous cruelty and unbridles power and wide oppression of men” (Dubois 2). Dubois’s The Negro in the United States is an autoethnographic text which is a representation “that the so-defined others

For this assignment, I chose a quote out of the book “Clotel, or the President’s Daughter”. The author, William Wells Brown frequently integrated outside quotes and works into his novel for a variety of reasons. The quote that I chose to do my paper on, is not originally from the novel, but a Washington Irving quote Brown decided to include in the novel because it was consistent with his writing and helped bring together a theme that his novel rotated around. The quote can be found at the very end of the novel and it reads as follows: “A celebrated writer has justly said of a woman, “A woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection, and, if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.”” (103) One of the main purposes of this quote is to explain the decisions and thought processes of the female characters throughout the novel.

In the novel Clotel, by William Wells Brown, is telling the story of a male who escapes from slavery and finds some success. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator goes on to tell his story of escaping the life of slavery in “The Life and Escape”. At that time, Brown is seen as an observer of the horrible things that happen to women during the time of slavery, but he can never really do much about it. Eventually, he ends up leaving it and it becomes his past, therefore the reader leaves it behind as well. Later on in the actual story of Clotel, he brings these issues back into the light again. This novel can be seen as an advocate for women because Brown in a sense gives them a voice. He shows their hopelessness and struggles they go through and even though he may not be able to do much about them, he is bringing them to the surface for the reader to see.