Interesting.
I recall reading in a Bathroom Reader book that the house where Jefferson supposedly wrote the Declaration was (many years later) torn down to make way for a hamburger stand.
What a monumental movement and effort this was!! We were truly blessed by God to have such brilliant leaders who crafted this document which has guided us through the last almost 250 years!!
It makes you wonder what they would say if they were here again today. I think they would be very pleased with what we accomplished over the almost 250 years as a result of their leadership and God’s blessings. It is amazing when you think about it.
Too bad they can’t come back and take over from the imbeciles who are leading us in the exact opposite direction today.
“..and if My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.”
Happy Fourth of July. God, please come back and bless America (again)!
LOC confirmed the citizen/subject issue with hyperspectral imaging. They didn’t discover this correction as they would like everyone to believe. Julian P. Boyd (in 1957) wrote: “TJ originally wrote ‘fellow-subjects,’ copying the term from the corresponding passage in the first page of the First Draft of the Virginia Constitution; then, while the ink was still wet on the ‘Rough draught’ he expunged or erased ‘subjects’ and wrote ‘citizens’ over it.”
Conservators at the LOC have been shamelessly taking credit for Boyd’s work for more than 20 years.
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, & 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.
While this is written is rather torturous prose, even by the standards of the day, it is clear that what is being condemned here is not the institution of chattel slavery itself, as was then being practiced in many of the Colonies (including Jefferson's Virginia) but, rather, the trans-Atlantic slave trade specifically. Moreover, the point that Jefferson was trying to make was that King George III had in the past allegedly worked to prevent the cessation of this slave trade (which Jefferson's draft did righteously condemn) but then, more recently, had allegedly worked through his agents to provoke a slave uprising in the slave-holding Colonies, as a wartime measure to suppress the ongoing rebellion.
It short, when all is said and done, Jefferson was trying with this clause to point out George III's cynical hypocrisy, but I believe that even men like John Adams, with their strong anti-slavery sentiments, found it a bit too esoteric a point, and one expressed in too convoluted a fashion, to warrant inclusion. Meanwhile, the representatives from the southernmost colonies, which still looked to the slave trade itself, obviously preferred that any such mention be dropped altogether.
blooming economies have mostly needed slaves, and the big economies of the world have all required slaves.
The idea is simple, yet heart-wrenching. What came first, the laborer or the paycheck?
Even the first few decades of our country (The presidents before Washington) had major issues with this because the continental army wasn’t getting paid.
China has slaves now. With that gold find (if it’s real) wait for things to get really bad in Uganda.
In order to be a global player, the economy is first built up on the backs of .. someone.
When you understand that we are all slaves, technically, today it will really sting. Just have to adjust a few things here and there and you’ll see it.
It didn’t originally condemn slavery. It condemned the slave trade while complaining the British were using slaves against their masters. Virginia was a slave exporter and generally opposed the African slave trade. South Carolina, Georgia, and Rhode Island objected to condemning the slave trade, Rhode Island because of involvement with the slave trade rather than slavery. The original draft also came off hypocritical.
The final version: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us” implying incouraging slaves to rebel.
The original version: “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 & 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 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 on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”
I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not.
-- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.