Anti-slavery passage removed from Declaration of Independence

[struggle4progress]

In his initial draft, Jefferson blamed Britain’s King George for his role in creating and perpetuating the transatlantic slave trade—which he describes, in so many words, as a crime against humanity ...

... Jefferson, who composed the Declaration between June 11 and June 28, 1776, sent a rough draft to members of a pre-selected committee, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, for edits ahead of its presentation to Congress. Between July 1 and July 3, congressional delegates debated the document, during which time they excised Jefferson’s anti-slavery clause.

https://www.history.com/news/declaration-of-independence-deleted-anti-slavery-clause-jefferson

[struggle4progress]

1. The deleted passage

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/declaration-independence-and-debate-over-slavery/

[COL Mustard]

2. It's Amazing What Impact Such A Distant Act Can Still Have

But we’re clearly still living with the effects of that decision today.

[ChrisF1961]

3. Yes they did unfortunately

[ExciteBike66]

4. It just boggles my mind that Jefferson owned slaves...

Has there ever been a bigger hypocrite than Jefferson?

[Klaralven]

5. He was a politician, writing a political grievance against Lord Dunmore's proclamation

This passage refers to a 1775 proclamation by Britain’s Lord Dunmore, which offered freedom to any enslaved person in the American colonies who volunteered to serve in the British army against the patriots’ revolt. The proclamation inspired thousands of enslaved people to seek liberty behind British lines during the Revolutionary War.

He was drafting the Declaration of Independence on behalf of the group, not as a personal statement.

Note that it was the "Declaration of Independence" and that the war is properly called the "American War of Independence", not the American Revolution.

The American bourgeoisie was fighting for independence from rule by the British royal class.

It was not really a war for individual freedom and it was revolutionary only in the narrow sense of the bourgeoisie overturning the social order with the first estate.

[msfiddlestix]

6. Excellent points. I've nothing more to add, just wanted to thank you for laying out the facts and in

perspective, demolishing long held myths repeatedly told by media, politicians, judges, historians, educators.

[RMVet]

7. Hmmm...

Strom Thurmond comes to mind . Think he was pretty hypocritical. His 'political views' (segregation) just didn't seem to line up with his 'personal views'. I'm sure there are even more hypocrites, unfortunately.

[Azathoth]

8. No more than when Al Gore used to fly on jets to talk about climate change

It's the mindset of "I didn't create this system, it's the way things are and I have to work within it."