Banneker’s use of figurative language is imperative to his main argument as it constructs a bridge between the white colonists and the black slaves. He immediately begins his letter with an allusion to the Revolutionary war, “recall…time in which…the British crown were exerted with every powerful effort in order to reduce you to a State of Servitude…” The recollection of the war invokes a feeling of sympathy within Jefferson as he aspires to comprehend the issue of slavery from a slave’s perspective. Jefferson thus compelled to acknowledge that the tyranny colonist are imposing on black slaves is similar to that of the British on the American colonists. Banneker later forces Jefferson to attest to the natural born rights mentioned in the