In her speech to the Union League Club of Chicago, Jane Addams utilizes experts along with logic while concurrently evoking emotions from her readers for the purpose of both admiring George Washington and promoting charitable causes. Addams delivered the speech in 1903 on the anniversary of the first president of the United States and famed politician George Washington. In the piece, the author connected the righteous life of Washington to what the modern person should be doing. Although Addams portrays Washington as a patriot and heroic American, he owned slaves, which, in turn, weakens her argument. She claims that the average man can be just as honorable and selfless as George Washington. Addams uses George Washington as the higher power while utilizing …show more content…
For the purpose of molding Washington into who she wanted him and her audience to be, Addams described Washington as a “patriot” who “listened to his conscience” (1). This strengthened her argument; Addams wanted a strong and noble figure to compare to the modern society she was trying to better. However, a problem arises in her argument because of the fact that George Washington had slaves. Suddenly, this great figure Addams was attempting to glorify had a serious flaw. Addams even admitted he owned slaves by saying “he freed his own slaves in his will” but softened that fact by saying Washington “felt very unhappy on the subject of slavery” (3). Nonetheless, Addams successful made Washington a hero in her speech and urged her audience to follow in his valorous footsteps. Similarly, Addams employs logic in her speech in an attempt to inspire her audience to improve the lives of the less fortunate.
Addams employs logic through hypophora in order to take a more scientific approach in conveying her ideas. Throughout the piece, the author writes a series of rhetorical questions and then follows them up with the answer Washington would have done