In Maria W. Stewart's lecture in Boston in 1832, she explains the hard life that African Americans have aspiring to be anything other than laborers. She explains what this hard labor does to the lives and souls of African Americans through the use of figurative language, diction and ethos. Altogether, these create a sense of injustice and despair for the cause of the African Americans and their freedoms and aspirations to be something more.
Figurative language, including similes, hyperboles, and metaphors, are all used to further Stewart's cause in the fight for African Americans' rights. The slaves are "confined by the chains of ignorance and poverty" despite their "high and honorable aquirements." This suggests that she thinks that slaves
