Wk 2 - Persuading the New Nation. Literature & Language Essay
Wk 2 - Persuading the New Nation
It is easy for Americans to think of the United States of America as united. However, from the nation's earliest days--literally from the time independence was declared--America has often experienced intense disunity, in which different factions sought to pull the nation in different directions or redefine it. These range from debates over what sort of organizational framework the new nation should have to what role slaves and Native Americans should have in it, to even if all states would remain part of the country. While some of these questions were settled by violence (the Civil War), most of them were settled through rhetoric.
Select one of the primary texts from this week's readings (any of the letters, sermons, speeches, or public documents actually written during the American colonial period).
Write a 1,050- to 1,400-word essay analyzing your chosen text, and include the following:
o Identify the genre of your chosen text (letter, sermon, speech, etc...).
o Analyze which of the classical rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, or logos) the author or authors of your text use. This analysis should include examples from the primary text, and evaluation of how successful is the use of these appeals. Note. These appeals are discussed in Ch. 4-6 of Analyzing Rhetoric.
o Make an argument about how the genre chosen and appeals used target specific audiences. Doing so will require both close reading of your chosen work and outside research.
Note. There is no minimum number of sources involved. However, you do need to provide convincing evidence about the audience addressed, how appropriate the genre chosen was, and in what ways the appeals were well-chosen for this audience (and in which ways they failed).
Format your paper according to appropriate course level APA guidelines.
Andrew Jackson, Second Annual Message to Congress (1830)
Andrew Jackson – Second Annual Message to Congress: A Rhetorical Analysis
Student Name
College/University Affiliation
ANDREW JACKSON
2
Andrew Jackson – Second Annual Message to Congress: A Rhetorical Analysis, The art of selling political messages, is sophisticated. Navigating intricate political,
economic and often socio-cultural paths, shrewd politicians often go long ways to appeal to audiences to make a message more appealing or sell a full political project. In doing so, political experience and skills are not enough. Instead, politicians, particularly at higher up levels of government, need a fine combination of personal charisma, strength of character, political backing, and, of course, rhetorical skills. The need to sell, politically speaking, assumes more significance in controversial cases and situations. In U.S. history, politicians, particularly presidents, show a wide range of political selling or campaigning strategies for a diversity of audiences spanning the U.S. full political, economic, social, racial, and cultural spectrum. The outcomes each politician has managed to achieve are a function of different situations defined by emerging and possible future expectations. Putting matters into perspective, a close examination of a political selling instance is required. For current purposes, U.S. President Andrew Jackson's second annual message to Congress (Jackson, 1830) is discussed. The primary text in the current essay centers on a critical issue echoing far and deep in U.S. politics, namely, wherein U.S. politics – and, for that matter, geography – Native Indians are and should be placed? Put differently, Native Indians, aboriginal inhabitants of America prior to European settlement, have experienced extensive extermination and relocation campaigns by different federal and state governments in pursuance of a wide range of political and economic gains including, most primarily, land development and use, settlement expansion (in the colonial period), natural resource extraction (particularly oil) and, of course, outright greed. The constitutional problem of Native Indians as citizens entitled to some property rights yet not protected by or accountable to
ANDREW JACKSON
3
federal or state governments make Native Indians a unique case in U.S. political geography. To understand such intricate relationship Native Indians have in U.S. politics, Jackson's second annual address message to Congress is, rhetorically speaking, closely read. This essay aims, accordingly, to examine U.S. President Andrew Jackson's second message to Congress in 1830 in order to identify and assess used rhetorical strategies in addressing Congress on relocating Native Indians from Southeastern states further West.
The "message" U.S. President Andrew Jackson delivers to Congress is, in fact, a speech. Intended to engage Congress to approve plans to relocate Native Indians to Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, the speech in question represents an interesting original text of an important period of U.S. history and politics. Using a range of rhetorical strategies to buy in approval, Jackson shows an early example of racializing a political (and economic) issue in order to achieve a political purpose. In contrast to more coercive ways to change the minds and hearts of a given political class, Jackson appeals to Congress using logos, ethos, and pathos to buy in support in carrying out the government's plans. To understand the ways Jackson employs different rhetorical strategies in the current excerpt, a closer examination is required. The following paragraphs discuss, accordingly, in more detail the intricate and subtle rhetorical devices Jackson uses to sell a message of Native American relocation to Congress.
Tone settings are, in speech making and delivery, critical for a successful outcome. In the current speech at hand, Jackson successfully sets a general context for an arguably extended speech on a controversial issue in the first opening lines:
It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the
ANDREW JACKSON
4
Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that their example w...