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.This was the passage removed from the Declaration of Independence, or the southern states would refuse to support independency.
The northern states (minus a few shipping merchant delegates) were intending to end slavery from the very founding of the nation. In 1776, it wasn't about bankrupting the south to steal their land from them; to Thomas Jefferson it was a moral call end an abomination before man and God.
The above passage was replaced with "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us."
-PJ
In 1776, I agree. However, in 1860, I have to consider the possibility that there was a monetary interest in ending slavery in order to dislodge Southern landowners from their land so it can be bought up to ensure a perpetual floor price for cotton.
I have never seen it.
I knew that the various states had to give and take in order to get together, especially with regards to slaves, but had not seen that particular paragraph.
A lawyer friend came back from a huge long trial. They didn’t win and they didn’t lose. “Well, we worked things out so each side felt like we were satisfied. We came to a compromise.”
“Well that’s good - and now you’re home.”
“Yes, but I don’t know. It just feels like such a ... compromise.”
You forget that the north greatly profited from the institution of slavery, while bearing none of the consequences. ALL those slave ships that disgorged thousands of Africans, (sold to them by their own kinsman) on the American continent were owned by Northerners. Once laws were passed prohibiting further importation of slaves, they became abolitionists. Yankees make me ill, such hypocrisy! Many of the wealthiest New England families owe their wealth to the slave trade.
Exactly. Republicans opposed the practice of slavery. They sought to stop the spread of slavery into new territory.
Democrats wanted to continue the practice and spread of slavery. Southern Democrats declared in writing that slavery was their reason for secession. Northern Democrats sided with Southern Democrats by supporting the Fugitive Slave Law.
Yes, Thomas Jefferson wrote this passage because he believed in ending the economic disaster to be that was slavery. He was, of course, a polymath. And it was notably Benjamin Franklin who engineered the removal of the passage. Benjamin Franklin from the Quaker state of permanent indentured servitude by William Penn and many others. The same Quakers who with rare exception, refused to help the American Revolution, and sold their farm good to the British Army (war profiteers as they were known then, and sanctimonious with their Quakerism.
Thomas Jefferson- repeatedly blasted about slaves he was not allowed to free (by Virginia State Law) until he was finally able to do so. So now these revisionists invent even more lies about the genius who was the brightest of our Founders.
You may have forgotten that when the Declaration was written, *ALL* the states were slave states.
And yes, the ugly truth is that without the Southern states, England quickly reconquers the New England states and re-establishes British rule.
The northern states (minus a few shipping merchant delegates) were intending to end slavery from the very founding of the nation.
That's not accurate. Most of the Northern states passed "gradual abolition" laws, but they didn't really end it. George Washington constantly cycled his slaves in and out of Pennsylvania in an effort to not violate Pennsylvania's gradual abolition laws that specified how long a slave could remain in their state.
Massachusetts of course went for Judicial activism, and got their slavery abolished on a legal technicality that was absolutely not voted for by the people. Very undemocratic, but Massachusetts has always been a Masshole about using courts to force the laws to mean what they want instead of what they really mean.
The above passage was replaced with "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us."
Which refers to Lord Dunmore's proclamation that any slave that came to fight for the British would be freed.