In this excerpt from a speech given for the four-year anniversary of the Boston Massacre, John Hancock utilizes emotive language and religious rhetoric to support his position that the Americans are victims of the British. Hancock uses emotive words to support his main idea. He begins with “...we felt the extremes of grief, astonishment, and rage.” “in anger, for a dreadful moment” and “suffered”, let tears “of pity” and “boiling passions shake their tender frames” as they remember that day. Hancock uses these emotional words to emphasize the struggle and pain that the Americans went through. He wants to show that they are victims of the unjust and cruel treatment of the British. As this history is being told to generations, tears “of pity”