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He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons 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 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 for 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.

2006-07-02 05:23:07 · 4 answers · asked by LeBlanc 6 in Arts & Humanities History

4 answers

The "waged cruel war" clause is Jefferson's original language, and he fought to have it included. Pretty amazing for a Virginian who owned slaves.

As noted, the southern delegations, most particularly the Carolinas, objected to Jefferson's anti-slavery tirade. The refused to vote for Independence unless it was removed, and independence required a unanimous vote.

Here is the original text as Jefferson drafted it:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h33t.html

2006-07-02 06:35:37 · answer #1 · answered by parrotjohn2001 7 · 0 0

The Declaration of Independence was actually written about England at the time, as our founders were wanting to break free of their influence. The actual slavery issue was addressed much later.

2006-07-02 12:29:12 · answer #2 · answered by Justsyd 7 · 0 0

I think it was up for a vote and only South Carolina and Georgia wouldn't sign it. What would the difference have been had they agreed?
Mind bogging, huh?

2006-07-02 12:54:36 · answer #3 · answered by Cindy P 4 · 0 0

yes

2006-07-02 12:27:28 · answer #4 · answered by hickz 2 · 0 0

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