Rhetorical devices

Rhetorical questions

In his Cornerstone speech, Alexander Stephens uses rhetorical questions to make his ideas sound more impactful. For example, when he discusses the way the new constitution allows money from a state to be used for only that specific state’s infrastructural improvements, Stephens asks: “What justice was there in taking this money, which our people paid into the common treasury on the importation of our iron, and applying it to the improvement of rivers and harbors elsewhere?” Through this rhetorical question, Stephen argues that the new laws are fairer as the taxpayers in a state also get to benefit from the improvements made with their money. 

Stephens asks another rhetorical question when he argues that the Confederacy has a large territory, big population, and a strong economic power, and is therefore as strong as other states: 

With such an area of territory as we have – with such an amount of population – with a climate and soil surpassed by any on the face of the earth – with such resources already at our command – wit...