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Luke A Morris

Ap Language

Mrs. Crandall 2nd

18 December 2019

Toussaint Louverture’s Legacy

Toussaint-Louverture was a former Haitian slave and an important man in history

because he led enslaved Haitians to liberation. Wendell Phillips, and American abolitionist,

delivered a powerful speech about Louverture in 1861. In the speech, Phillips moved the

audience in terms of emotions and praised Toussaint-Louverture for his revolutionary beliefs and

unmatched determination. Phillips used rhetorical strategies like allusions, metaphors, and

anaphora to achieve a heartfelt speech that impacts and collects within audience being targeted.

In the beginning of Wendell Phillips’ speech, he describes Toussaint-Louverture and uses

allusions to tell the audience what is to come. For example, he states that he wants to “tell you

the story of a negro who has left hardly one written line” (8-9). This explains to the audience that

he is going to be talking about Toussaint and how he achieved what he did with a lack of

education. Another strategy that Wendell Phillips uses towards the middle of the speech is a

metaphor. He explains how Louverture’s achievements and perseverance’s were caused by his

enemies by saying that “All the materials for his biography are from the lips of his enemies” (13-

14). This metaphor is comparing the materials of his biography to his enemy’s lips; which

implies that all the people who were against him and negatively spoke to him fueled his

motivation to achieve. The metaphor paints an image of the powerful mind of Toussaint-

Louverture.
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Towards the middle and the end of Phillips’ speech, it can be shown that the strategy

adage is used, Wendell Phillips uses this famous saying to add a familiar phrase for the audience,

but mostly to characterize the wisdom in Louverture. Everybody knows that “We measure genius

by quality not by quantity…” (26). This effects the reader by engulfing them in a very common

saying which therefore relates to them in a more personal way. Shortly after, Wendell Phillips

uses Anaphora to emphasize the meaning of his statement. He uses repetition in the structure

when he says that “I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he

founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great

Virginian held slaves.” (27-30). This Anaphora is used very well to promote the meaningful

descriptions of Cromwell and Washington along with how they contrast to Louverture.

Wendell Phillips created this appraisal for the audience of people who wanted to be

motivated and inspired by the accomplishments of Toussaint-Louverture. The speech was written

as a encomium for Louverture, but it used rhetorical strategies to enhance the heartfelt

characterizations and was delivered as a work of art. Every person who experiences the moment

in which the words were presented, was able to easily relate and imagine the situations used as

examples. Phillips had strategies like allusions at the beginning in order to set the structure of his

speech and then incorporated metaphors in the middle. He finished off with anaphora to praise

Toussaint-Louverture one more time.