![]() For these reasons the notion that the charge was simply too obtuse to be sustained does not fully explain its deletion. They utilized natural rights to emphasize the negatives of slavery and its inconsistency with Christian values. Early abolitionists as well as Whigs had long sought abolition and indicted slavery in moral terms similar to Jefferson’s. Furthermore, the political history of the time suggests the founders and other politically interested parties continually made the charge a centerpiece of their argument in favor of ending the slave trade. Great Britain blocked all such attempts lending credibility to Jefferson’s charge. Of course, Americans were not without blame and were complicit in the tragedy of slavery, but there were attempts to end the trade in the colonies. Some scholars have argued that this charge was dubious at best and suggest that is why it was ultimately deleted. 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.” These words assign blame for the introduction of American slavery and the perpetuation of the slave trade to the 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. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Jefferson wrote: “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 part constituted the lengthiest section of Thomas Jefferson’s draft, was the most controversial, and was arguably the most vicious charge against the King of Great Britain. There is something, however, that is not housed in the Charters of Freedom, something most Americans know nothing about: a deleted portion of the Declaration of Independence. The combination of architectural beauty, august ambiance, and history is incredibly powerful. ![]() ![]() ![]() The Archives house our nation’s founding documents - the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Tips from Past “We The Future” Contest Winners!Įach year millions of Americans walk through the Charters of Freedom at the National Archives building in Washington D.C. ![]()
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