Skip to main content

SLAVERY AND DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

 

In the course of my research on a website by the American Intercontinental University, I found interesting information in one of John Adams’ letters to a Timothy Pickering responding to Pickering’s questions about the writing of the Declaration. That’s when I picked up on a comment made by Adams when he reflected on his critique of the Declaration when Thomas Jefferson showed him his original draft.
Adams wrote: “I was delighted with its high tone and the flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning Negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose.”
That passage certainly made my ears perk up because I had never before seen a reference to a passage regarding slavery in the Declaration of Independence.
My research Kthen led me to a website called BlackPast.org where I found the passage written by Jefferson in his original draft, but which indeed had been removed from the final document before it would be passed by the delegates gathered at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1776.
Here is that passage wherein Jefferson railed against King George III for creating and sustaining the slave trade, describing it as "a cruel war against human nature."
“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.”
Jefferson was referring of course to Lord Dunmore, the former royal governor of Virginia, who on November 7, 1775, proclaimed freedom for all slaves (or indentured servants) belonging to Patriots, if they were able and willing to bear arms, and joined the British forces. Within a month of the proclamation, more than five hundred slaves left their masters and became Loyalists.
However, many slaves fought on the side of the Patriots, too, in the hopes of earning their freedom when the war was over with a victory for the patriots. Wikipedia quotes one historian as saying that “Two revolutions went on at the same time - the Patriots against the British, and a second one fought by blacks for their freedom.”
According to a website hosted by PBS entitled “Revolution, Africans in America”, when the document was presented to the delegates, both northern and southern slaveholding delegates objected to its inclusion, and it was removed. The only remaining allusion to the original paragraph on slavery is the phrase "He has excited domestic Insurrections among us," included in a list of grievances against the king.
Decades later Jefferson blamed the removal of the passage on delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, and Northern delegates who represented merchants who were at the time actively involved in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Of course, this column would not be complete without my reminding you of the rest of the story. Thomas Jefferson, in spite of his intense hatred of the slave trade conducted under the auspices of King George, was himself a lifelong slave holder.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Moneymaker House on Harwood Avenue

I was so thrilled to read in last night's Lebanon Daily Record that the Laclede County Historical Society has now received title to the Moneymaker House on Harwood Avenue. I have always loved that house. As a little girl living in Old Town Lebanon on the corner of Wood & Apple Streets, and walking to school each day, I passed that house every day and always thought it was the most beautiful house in town. The large mature trees in the front yard were always so stately with their long curvy branches sweeping the ground and creating a canopy for the squirrels to have their own private playhouse during the spring and summer. In the fall, the leaves became a gorgeous array of colors gradually falling to the ground and making a carpet under the trees, eventually paving the way for the white snow which inevitably would come as winter would arrive. I loved the low branches sweeping the ground at the Moneymaker house so much that I asked Milan in the early years of our marriage to le...

"Mary Did You Know" by Mark Lowry

THE NIGHT GOD WATCHED OVER MY SON IN LAW

  I’m sure most of us who read the Lebanon newspaper on a daily basis are appalled at the number of drug stops, domestic abuse, and break-ins that take place in Lebanon every day. I often wonder how our law enforcement men and women keep a straight face at the stupid statements made by the people they encounter during these incidents. We sometimes have to laugh, wondering how dumb these people think our officers are. But we become very serious when we think of so many drug and alcohol impaired drivers being out on the roads and highways at the same time we are transporting our loved ones back and forth over those same roads. And we must never forget that every one of those traffic stops, domestic disturbance calls and other 911 calls puts those officers at tremendous risk of serious injury or the loss of their own lives, even when the situation appears to be routine and mundane. Such was the case on December 9, 1991 when Deputy Sheriff Leslie Roark went to the home of James R. Joh...