in New Orleans…[which] can be seen on television screaming ‘nigger, nigger, nigger’.” This is obviously is emotional appeal, of which the majority of his essay is comprised. Later he criticizes the white moderates for their lack of courage and apparent loss of concern for the atrocities being committed in their own cities. This is only one of the many noticeable tone shifts and different persuasive techniques used in his essay. His logical arguments come directly from examples in our history books and are used to convince the clergymen of their own acts of rebellion. Being all of a Christian faith, this is especially effective because of its direct correlation of the teachings of Jesus Christ: “So when [the crowd] continued asking him, [Jesus] lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her… And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.”Later in the essay, he again uses highly respected people from the Bible and even our own government to identify the “extremists” already irreversibly integrated into our society such as Jesus, Paul, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Probably the most convincing strategy king uses lies in the many examples from our own history and his reoccurring references to the very religion that the clergymen were so dedicated to upholding. After reading the entire letter, you are left with almost no choice but to side with King’s glorious battle and his fight for equality through peaceful means.As an opposite, peace is not necessarily the means by which Thoreau wants to achieve is purposes. His article entitled “Civil Disobedience” was written while he also spent a night in jail, but was not published until some time later. His ...
