2 - Slavery and Freedom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
[King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
Initial draft of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, July 1776In their effort to break away from the British Crown, the delegates gathered at the Continental Congress in early July 1776 had appointed a select committee to draw up a statement of their revolutionary purpose. To that end they were presented with a report, modestly titled a Declaration of Independence. Authored by the young Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, the report asserted that “We hold these truths to be self evident; that all Men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent & inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Jefferson then proceeded to enumerate a list of “injuries and usurpations” by the king of Great Britain against his colonial subjects in North America. Included in the list was a ringing indictment of the British Crown's support for the traffic in slaves between Africa and the New World.
Although they accepted – with some editorial changes – the bold rhetoric of the report, Jefferson's fellow delegates were not of a mind to endorse their young colleague's complaint about the slave trade.
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- Conflict and CompromiseThe Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation and the American Civil War, pp. 18 - 40Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989