Through many rhetorical devices such as pathos and a serious tone, Benjamin Banneker, a free African American, wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson to make a point that slavery is an immoral practice and slaves should be able to live a free life just like the ones who declared independence and earn their freedom
One of the things Banneker does is use the same words that Jefferson said and spit them back at him. Jefferson states in the Declaration of Independence that there are “…unalienable rights…” that every man is born with and can not be taken away and that they are the right to “…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but yet the slaves don’t have these rights. Banneker implies that if this were completely true, then every man should