Declaration of Independence

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Declaration of Independence

American document of July 4, 1776, declaring the separation of thirteen British colonies in North America from Great Britain.

In an early version of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, the document's main author, denounced Britain for its role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He wrote of British king George III:

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the person of a distant people who never offended him; captivating and 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 and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.”

Present-day historians and contemporaries of Jefferson have disagreed about whether this passage was a condemnation of slavery. Many Northern colonists interpreted it as such, but Southern slaveholders tended to distinguish Jefferson's condemnation of the slave trade from a condemnation of slave ownership—a position not as paradoxical as it may seem.

Some eighteenth-century thinkers in America believed that while the brutal capture and transatlantic shipping of slaves was inhumane, the “management” of slaves who were already in America was not. Jefferson, who owned more than one hundred slaves, may have held such views. Moreover, while slave ownership benefited many Southerners, the slave trade was still controversial because imported slaves lowered the value of slaves already in America. Many Southerners were also frightened by an increasing black population, which already outnumbered the white population in many areas.

Regardless of the passage's meaning, delegations from Georgia and South Carolina, both of which wanted slave trade and ownership to continue, encouraged the Continental Congress to delete any reference to slavery. Northern colonies, many of which had profited from the trafficking of slaves, were inclined to acquiesce. Furthermore, several delegates in each region argued that it was simply untrue that George III had forced the slave trade on the colonies. Most historians agree that Jefferson's claims in this area were exaggerated. The passage was deleted with little protest.

In a separate passage, Jefferson condemned George III for allowing his governors to offer freedom to slaves if they would fight with the British against the colonists. This charge, too, was deleted, although the declaration does condemn the king for waging war “with Cruelty and Perfidy” and for having “excited domestic insurrections against us,” probable references to the enlistment of slaves.

Because mention of slavery was removed was from the declaration, and yet slavery remained pervasive in American life, the meaning of the declaration's much-quoted preamble is unclear: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Some historians argue that Jefferson intended “all men” to mean both white and black men. Others, however, argue that in 1776 Jefferson did not have to say “all white men” because “white” was implicit. Nonetheless, a few Northern colonies included the clause “all men are created equal” in their state constitutions as a way of prohibiting slavery. Later, abolitionists also recalled the preamble in their arguments against slavery.

See also Abolitionism in the United States; Slavery in the United States.

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