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Ethos Logos In The American Revolution

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After the French and Indian War had ended in 1763, the British parliament passed various laws to collect more taxes in American colonies in ways to pay for their war debt. As a result, colonists outraged as they had been taxed unjustly without having any representation in the British parliament, which eventually led to an uprising known as the American Revolution. In the process of making a revolution, Thomas Jefferson, a revolutionist, and father of our modern constitution, effectively masters an appeal to ethos, pathos, logos, and strong dictions to inform King George III on reasonings behind American colonies’ justifications for becoming independent from the Great Britain. In the first paragraph, Jefferson begins with an allusion to religion …show more content…

Jefferson then uses ethos to give a counter logical argument that government should not be “changed for light and transient causes,” with a sole reason to justify these claims as a necessity. He achieves this by identifying wrongdoings from the Great Britain with strong dictions such as “abuses and usurpations” and “absolute Despotism,” then concluding with another use of deductive reasoning to argue that people have rights to “throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security” if the system has been abused. He states it to inform the readers about abuses that colonists have suffered from the Great Britain and acts as a rational decision to become independent and create a new form of government. Finally, Jefferson continues on using strong dictions to further denote the King George III and begins on utilizing inductive reasoning to logically prove his

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