Rhetorical Strategies in The Declaration of Independence
You can find this storyboard in the following articles and resources:
The Declaration of Independence: A Primary Source Analysis
Lesson Plans by Richard Cleggett and Kristy Littlehale
American independence begins not only with war and protest, but the Declaration of Independence itself. Written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, the Declaration is one of the most important and defining documents of our nation’s beginning. Learn more and engage students with premade activities and storyboards with Storyboard That.
Storyboard Description
Rhetorical Strategies Ethos Pathos Logos in the Declaration of Independence
Storyboard Text
- ETHOS (ETHICS / CREDIBILITY)
- EXAMPLE #1
- EXAMPLE #2
- “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
- “We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in general congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states…”
- LOGOS (LOGIC)
- “...that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government…”
- “He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.”
- This court is being dismantled by order of the King!
- PATHOS (EMOTIONS)
- Support for the rebels is playing with fire...
- “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.”
- “A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
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