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Anna Collins

Tatum

AP Lang

17 December 2019

Phillips Rhetorical Analysis

Wendell Phillips, a Northern Abolitionist wrote this speech to persuade Northern soldiers

and Abolitionists give African Americans the ability to serve in the Northern military. Phillips

integrates constant comparison between past famous military leaders, and he compares them to

Toussaint L’Ouverture, who freed Haiti and Haitian slaves from French rule. Phillips

incorporates juxtaposition, first person point of view, and the future tense to move his audience

and convince them that the best way to win the war is to allow African Americans to fight.

When Phillips wrote this speech, he knew the Civil War had taken a toll on his audience

made of Northern Soldiers and abolitionists. Phillips uses Toussaint L'Ouverture in his speech to

show how a man freed a nation’s slaves and freed Haiti from French rule. At the beginning of his

speech, Phillips juxtaposes L'ouverture to Washington, Cromwell, and Napoleon who have a

good reputation for being strong leaders and are known for their accomplishments during battle

and how they gained lots of land for their respective countries. Phillips informs the audience that

the men were not good people and Washington “risked his empire rather than to permit the slave-

trade” (Phillips p. 3). Philips is aware that his audience knows who Washington is and they

would not know his past faults, but by telling his audience what Washington’s morals were they

may look to someone else who had freed people instead of keeping them as slaves. Unlike the

three other men, Phillips never mentions any of L'ouverture’s wrongdoings; therefore,

successfully putting L'ouverture over the three other men because he had stronger morals that
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aligned with the ideas in the audience. By using juxtaposition, Phillips proves that L'ouverture

accomplished a long lasting and morally clean solution even though he fought with slaves

against an allegedly stronger enemy.

Philips also uses Louverature’s actions to guide his audience into guide his audience into

favoring Louverture which leads them to allow slaves to fight in the Northern Army. Phillips

includes that Louverture gambled the nation of Haiti to ensure that no slaves worked in the

“humblest village of his dominions” (Phillips p. 3). Toussaint cared about each and every slave,

just like the Northerns do and both parties hate the deplorable act of slavery. Phillips speech gets

the men to put themselves in his shoes and see the white man's forgotten past because no one

focuses on their failures because no one wants to think of their national heroes as men who acted

in their own self interest. After many of the Haitian slaves gained freedom, Toussaint worked to

make sure all of them remained free. This plan sets Toussaint apart from other military leaders

because if they do not have a strong system set in place, sometimes what they changed will

revert to what it was before. This happened to Alexander the Great after he conquered Persia

because the land was divided between men who were not fit to rule, and only a few years after

his death the system he built up was demolished.

To get his audience to act, Philips needed them to think what may happen if the Northern

army loses and never agreed to allow the African Americans to fight. To make sure this comes

across Philps uses the future tense to get his audience to have the realization that opening up the

people allowed to fight could be a turning point for the war. Phillips wants the audience to think

“fifty years hence, when truth gets a hearing” (Phillips p.4). This makes his audience think about

what will happen to the slaves if they lose, and what will happen in fifty years if they were not

able to come to a resolution. Along with that, Phillips recognizes that each group of people has a
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stand out leader who made the most accomplishments, and Toussaint Louverture will have his

name up with men like Brutus and Phocion. Phillips wants his audience to get passed any

cultural bias and think about what allowing the African Americans to fight will do for the

country as a whole which makes his speech more memorable.

In his speech, Phillips uses juxtaposition, first person point of view, and the future tense

to prove to his audience that allowing the African Americans to fight in the Civil War will result

in a Northern victory and no more slaves. Phillips uses Toussaint Louverture as an example of an

African American who came from nothing, but fought off the British, French, and Spaniards to

gain freedom for him and his people.