50 POINTS Directions: Using specific evidence from the text, write a well-developed paragraph responding to the following prompt.

Explain one rhetorical strategy or figurative language Adams used in these paragraphs to support his claim or thesis. Be sure to explain the effect the use of the strategy has for the reader, citing textual evidence.


An excerpt from John Q. Adams’ Supreme Court Amistad Case Speech

1 ...I appear here on the behalf of thirty-six individuals, the life and liberty of every one of whom depend on the decision of this Court... Three or four of them are female children, incapable, in the judgment of our laws, of the crime of murder or piracy, or, perhaps, of any other crime. Yet, from the day when the vessel was taken possession of by one of our naval officers, they have all been held as close prisoners, now for the period of eighteen long months...

2 The Constitution of the United States recognizes the slaves, held within some of the States of the Union, only in their capacity of persons—persons held to labor or service in a State under the laws thereof—persons constituting elements of representation in the popular branch of the National Legislature persons, the migration or importation of whom should not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year 1808. The Constitution nowhere recognizes them as property. The words slave and slavery are studiously excluded from the Constitution. Circumlocutions are the fig-leaves under which the parts of the body politic are decently concealed. Slaves, therefore, in the Constitution of the United States are persons, enjoying rights and held to the performance of duties…

3 The persons aforesaid, described as slaves, are Negroes and persons of color, who have been transported from Africa in violation of the laws of the United States... The Court should enable the United States to send the Negroes home to Africa...in pursuance of the law of Congress passed March 3, 1829, entitled "An act in addition to the acts prohibiting the slave-trade."