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Summary Of The Crisis Number One By Thomas Paine

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Thomas Paine's "The Crisis Number One" and Patrick Henry's "Speech in the Virginia Convention" were both written in the Age of Reasoning as a way to provoke Americans to fight for independence from Great Britain. While both “The Crisis” and “Speech in the Virginia Convention” succeeded in inspiring the colonialists, they both use different persuasive techniques. Thomas Paine uses a hopeful tone in his essay, as well as rhetorical devices associated with the future, to convince his readers. Henry takes a more aggressive approach in his speech, using rhetorical devices to emphasise the seriousness of the situation, which ultimately makes the speech more persuasive than “The Crisis Number One.”
In Patrick Henry’s “Speech in the Virginia …show more content…

In “The Crisis Number One,” Paine uses religious imagery throughout his essay to emphasize that the soldiers during the American Revolution have God in their favor. An excellent example of this is when he states, “I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupported it to perish..” (Paine 175). This would surely lift the people's spirits at the edge of war, but it masks the reality of the situation and how uncertain it is. Similarly, in Henry’s speech, he uses a biblical allusion to how Jesus was betrayed by a kiss,“Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed by a kiss” (Henry 204). He is trying to demonstrate how how sinister King George III is and to further highlight the point that they only way to stop the King is war. Henry uses the biblical reference to secure the seriousness of the situation, while Paine uses it to convey hopefulness to the situation at hand, which can easily overcast the condition of the United States during that period.
People who have read both of these works of literature might oppose the opinion that Henry’s speech is superior to Paine’s pamphlet due to the context of them. Thomas Henry’s speech was given in front of the Convention as its members were discussing the serious matter of trying to find a way to negotiate and come to agreement with King George III. Thomas Paine’s essay was written during

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