Thirty-three year old Thomas Jefferson wrote
what became America’s Declaration of Independence.
To write America’s formal notice to the
world, a committee of five had been appointed
by Congress: members were John Adams, Benjamin
Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston,
and Roger Sherman. This drafting committee
served for a little less than one month. During
this time, several drafts of the document
were made and revised before the final version
was adopted and signed, the one we now recognize
as The Declaration of Independence. Jefferson
did not jump at the chance to write this historic
text. Instead, when asked by John Adams to
create a first draft, Jefferson told Adams
that Adams himself should write it. With a
little persuasion from Adams, Jefferson acquiesced
and brought back to the committee a first
draft, which was revised somewhat by the other
members.
How extensive were the various revisions?
We know that they were extensive enough to
upset Jefferson. He complained to Richard
Henry Lee, a personal friend, about the edits
to his original, and Lee wrote back to Jefferson,
“I wish sincerely . . . that the Manuscript
had not been mangled as it is.” Lee consoled
Jefferson by also stating that “the Thing
is in its nature so good, that no Cookery
can spoil the Dish for the palates of Freemen.”
Today, we can see from early versions that
Adams and Franklin made modest changes, mostly
to individual words and phrases. While the
number of these instances is significant,
the extent of these changes is minor. In fact,
the draft considered by the committee is so
close to the one reported back to Congress
that Jefferson had little to complain about
in terms of the content and message. Congress
itself made some revisions, and one that undoubtedly
troubled Jefferson is especially telling.
Jefferson had included a paragraph condemning
the king of Great Britain for slavery and
the slave trade. It places the blame for America’s
involvement in human trafficking squarely
at the feet of the English king. This paragraph
was the last in a list of eighteen he statements,
listing the colonists’ grievances against
the British king. Here is what the draft says:
he has waged cruel war against human nature
itself, violating it’s 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. 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 to
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 upon
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.
The language clearly blames American slavery
on Britain. Jefferson adds insult to injury
by the all-uppercase word “CHRISTIAN.”
The intended irony is clear; nobody who is
really Christian would act in the manner of
King George III. What had he done? He violated
the natural rights of “a distant people,”
black Africans. There is no hesitation in
seeing Africans as fully human with the same
“sacred rights” Including “life & liberty”
as any other people. Obviously, Jefferson
was asserting this right for the colonists
too as the primary justification for independence.
Jefferson also condemned the Middle Passage
in the clearest of terms, writing that black
Africans were forced “to incur miserable
death in their transportation thither.”
From the colonists’ point of view, they
had never instigated the slave trade. They
did not start it, oversee it, or conduct it.
Instead, they were subjects of the king, and
their British overlords foisted it upon them.
Moreover, they could not have stopped it because
their powers were limited under British rule.
This was not only Jefferson’s personal sentiment
toward slavery and the slave trade, but the
paragraph also made it through the committee
of five. While the committee must have known
that pro-slavery states would bristle at this
language, they believed it strongly enough
to send it to Congress for review and approval.
Moreover, the language in this paragraph might
have been expected to survive the scrutiny
of the whole Congress. There is no reason
to believe that this paragraph represented
some personal attempt by Jefferson to tweak
his fellow representatives with an intolerable
and therefore hollow proposition. How could
it possibly be approved? Well, inspected closely,
it condemns all of the outside actors: the
king, the British Parliament, perhaps even
English slavers and their associates, but
it does not mention colonial participants:
colonial slave merchants, plantation owners,
or other American slaveholders. Consequently,
even slave states might have acquiesced to
its inclusion.
Congress, however, did excise this paragraph.
For various reasons, this was the only one
of thirty-one paragraphs submitted by Jefferson
that was cut from the original draft of The
Declaration. For Jefferson, this paragraph’s
removal weakened America’s argument for
independence and eliminated a clear broadside
against the king’s tyrannical rule. Nevertheless,
Jefferson’s objections—however he expressed
them—were not enough to save this particular
draft paragraph.
Maybe those who emphasize America’s role
in slavery and blame the founders for it would
not be appeased either way. How so? If Jefferson’s
original words would have remained in The
Declaration, the founders could then be accused
of hypocrisy because they allowed slavery’s
continuation even after the constitutional
convention of 1787. But, solving the problem
of slavery was much harder than simply not
transporting slaves to The New World would
have been. Once settled in the Americas, Africans
were here to stay. There could be no new reverse
Middle Passage returning slaves to Africa.
Besides, slaves had lost connections to Africa.
They had no nations, lands, or houses sitting
empty, waiting for their return. And, American
slaves spoke English, Portuguese, and Spanish
not the tribal languages of their ancestors.
No, once brought to America few would ever
return. The reasons are practical, not ideological.
Jefferson himself was later to imagine repatriating
slaves to Africa, but no such plan was ever
drawn up for serious purposes. America, like
every nation before or since, consists of
its historical inheritance combined with its
attempts to build a better tomorrow.
When you hear people criticize America’s
founders because slavery existed here, remind
them that America’s founders were not themselves
personally responsible for that fact. They
inherited that world. Slavery existed in America
before they came, as it existed throughout
the world. America’s founders tried to find
a way to change their world for the better.
Most of the representatives in Congress vehemently
opposed slavery, and their opposition helped
move the country away from it. Ultimately
it would take a civil war to eliminate slavery
in The United States, but the founders’
ideas about liberty and equality contain the
seed that eventually birthed liberty for everyone
in this New World, this Land of Liberty.
