Slavery is a scar on the past of America that is still healing to this day. In this letter Benjamin Banneker, a former slave, is writing to Thomas Jefferson regarding the present state of slavery in the United States. Urging him humbly and earnestly, not to be forced to do something about the state of slavery, but to have a sincere conviction upon the fact thereof. In his letter he writes using all three of the rhetoric devices: ethos, pathos, and logos. When he uses ethos, he writes, not of the authority of one man, but of the authority of the ideals, documents, and insight that this nation was founded upon. He uses pathos in reminding Mr. Jefferson of the horrors and injustice of a state of slavery that the British Crown inflicted upon
