A curious ommission from the
Declaration of Independence
Writers of the Document
• John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson
selected to write it.
• Thomas Jefferson takes on the main role of writer.
• He is 33 and from the southern colony of Virginia
• Well educated
• Served 5 years in the Virginia legislature before the
Revolution
• Governor of Virginia during the war
• In his lifetime he owned over 600 slaves… some of them
his own children
The missing paragraph
• 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.
• “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its
most sacred rights of life & 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.”
• He then criticized the crown for:
• “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 also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against
the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit
against the lives of another.”
• What is he referring to here?
• During the Revolutionary war, the British promised freedom to slaves in
the colonies that agreed to fight with the British against the Patriots.
• He’s calling the King a hypocrite
• Why is Jefferson also a hypocrite?
Why did the other leaders of the Patriots take out
these paragraphs on slavery?
• Some indication the men who advised removing
the paragraph critiquing slavery were
northerners, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin,
and others.
• Why did men from colonies with very few
slaves take this position in 1776?
• What do you think?
Northern “interests” in slavery
1. Shipping in the colonies dominated by men/colonies in the North
• $$$ for shipping southern cash crops (cotton, tobacco, indigo…) that was
planted/picked by enslaved peoples, to Europe
• $$$ for building/piloting the ships that transported enslaved peoples
2. Unity?
• Northern colonies (in particular which colony?) had been clashing more with
the British
• If they want to take on Britain, the need to support of the colonies in the
South
Critics of this “Northern Position”
• British writer Samuel Johnson:
• “How was it possible that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the
drivers of Negroes?”
• Former Gov. of Mass. Thomas Hutchinson
• “I could wish to ask the Delegates of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas,
how their constituents justify the depriving more than an hundred thousand
Africans of their rights to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and in some
degree to their lives, if these rights are so absolutely unalienable….”
• Jefferson’s paragraphs critical of slavery is removed
• Replaced with criticisms against the King for inciting warfare between the
Native tribes and the colonists.
• How do we reconcile ourselves to the fact that many of our founding fathers
were slave holders?
• How would our history have been different if we had abolished slavery from
the start of our independence?
• After the revolution there is a steady stream of northern states abolishing
slavery.
• However, in the South, slavery continues to grow and by 1861 there are
over 4 million enslaved people in the United States.
The Constitution of the United States is
Ratified June 21, 1888