Benjamin Banneker Excerpt
Benjamin Banneker Excerpt The Declaration of Independence, a well-respected document responsible for seceding the United States of America from the oppressive Great Britain, had a false allegation written in it: that all men were created equal and endowed with unalienable rights. The only men who proved to be equal in the eyes of society were the property owning white men, and slaves, after some of them having had helped their American allies achieve freedom, were once again subjugated to the cruel tendencies of their owners. There have been several opinions about its constitutional fairness and Benjamin Banneker—the son of former slaves and a highly intellectual individual—wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson that was designed to poke at his façade of his hypocritical view on what free men were by utilizing several religious appeals, an array of comparative allusions, and repetition of respectful notions. Banneker uses his religious appeals to attack Jefferson's attitude towards pro-slavery. The author describes the American victory as a blessing from God to quietly point out how the likes of Jefferson are in good graces in the community of the heavenly to appeal to authority. But, Benjamin Banneker truly strikes at Jefferson's hypocrisy when he claims that Jefferson went against God's mercies in detaining slaves in much the same fashion as the British did to the Americans to make Jefferson feel guilty of what he pretends to proclaim the values that he himself does not abide by. Mentioning the Heavenly Father that both Banneker and Jefferson are devoted to ties the two men together in a holy union and changes the dynamic of where Banneker is coming from: that he is a fellow Christian arguing for the reason for the hypocrisy of the view of equal men rather than a slave questioning it. And by Banneker pointing out Jefferson's disobedience, it serves as not just an admonition from the son of slaves, but from a fellow devoted Christian. If there is one thing