Did Thomas Jefferson Try to Abolish Slavery in the Declaration of Independence?

0 Posted by - April 29, 2021 - LATEST POSTS, SLAVERY

Of all his writings, Thomas Jefferson’s most famous and far-reaching was undoubtedly his draft of the Declaration of Jefferson_ThomasIndependence.

Although the issue of slavery was widely debated — both the chattel slavery of Africans in America and the civil slavery that fired patriot rhetoric — it is conspicuously absent from the final version of the Declaration. Yet in his rough draft, Jefferson railed against King George III for creating and sustaining the slave trade, describing it as “a cruel war against human nature.”

Although Jefferson’s description of the slave trade was as much an indictment of the colonies as of Britain and the king, the issue that most distressed the patriots stemmed from Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation that offered freedom to slaves who joined the British cause: “…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 also obtruded them…”

When the document was presented to the Continental Congress on July 1, 1776, 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.

Original Article Found At http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h33.html

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  • twilightmoon June 11, 2020 - 10:01 pm

    Thomas Jefferson tried to end slavery in his home state of Virginia and only failed by one vote. The efforts he made to end slavery in Virginia aren’t widely known or reported on but he did try to end it. He was not successful, but neither was anyone else until the Civil War. He owned slaves that he never purchased and because he had debts he was not legally allowed to free them even in his will.

    https://www.wnd.com/2016/01/thomas-jeffersons-goal-ending-slavery/