Analysis of Patrick Henry essays

Analysis of Patrick Henry essays In the speech, "The Virginia Convention," Patrick Henry set out to convince the Virginia delegates that the war with England was inevitable and the longer they waited the harder the war would be to win. Patrick Henry uses the art of persuasion to win over his audience. In the essay, The Crisis, No. 1, Thomas Paine set out to persuade the people of each colony should stand up and fight for their freedom. He set out to convince the colonists that the tyrant England had binded the colonies in her grasp and transformed the colonists into slaves. In the, Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson sets out to convince the State of Virginia that whites are the superior race and that all African Americans that have been emancipated should be exported to another country. All of the authors institute effective use of the range of appeals, logos, ethos, and pathos giving the speech a quality of concrete mental and physical wholeness. The logos contribution of Henry's address makes use of solid facts to convince the people of Virginia that fighting or slavery are the only possible outcomes of their meeting. He uses this as a fear factor to persuade the people that fighting is the only way to maintain their freedom. These logical facts are used mainly in the third and fourth paragraphs and he also ends his assertions with questions. "Are fleets and armies necessary to work a love and reconciliation?" asks Henry of his audience. This arrangement of writing, a question, serves not only to state the obvious motive that the "fleets and armies" are not on American soil to promote peace, but to suppress the colonies and this shows the Convention a justification in their actions to fight not flight. Another purpose is achieved in the second part of the question to appeal to ethos, "love and reconciliation". This shows that while America is working for love and reconciliation, England is sending fleets and armies. The c ...