From draft to final declaration

We often wonder how our founding fathers could have written the phrase "all men are created equal" while simultaneously sanctioning and supporting slavery. A close look at the changes made in the various drafts of the Declaration of Independence reveals a struggle to try to accommodate those two ways of thinking.

The Declaration of Independence started with a rough draft created by Thomas Jefferson. It took him almost three weeks to craft it. He then submitted his work to the other members of the five-man committee assigned to the task by the First Continental Congress -- Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania, John Adams from Massachusetts, Robert Livingston from New York and Roger Sherman from Connecticut. The changes made by this committee are subtle, but thought-provoking.

Almost all Americans are familiar with the opening phrase of the Declaration: "When in the Course of human Events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another..."

But Jefferson originally wrote: "...it becomes necessary for a People to advance from that Subordination, in which they have hitherto remained..." In some ways, "political bonds" seems more accurate and appropriate than "subordination." It also is a weaker expression, carrying less force. Perhaps the comparison between the colonist's subordination to England paralleled a little too closely the subordination of slave to master.

The other familiar phrase of the Declaration "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." was also changed from the original. Jefferson's version had, "...all Men are created equal and independent..." Yet to say all men should be considered independent was not consistent with slavery.

There were also changes which resulted in the next phrase: "that they [all men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..." Jefferson's version had, "...that from that equal Creation they derive Rights inherent and unalienable.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "Unalienable" as "impossible to take away or give up." The modifier "certain" suggests a limit to the "Rights" without specifying exactly what rights are "impossible to take away" and what rights it somehow is possible to take away. In addition, Jefferson's longer wording asserts the very act of man's creation is what confers unalienable rights upon him. The committee's revision implies that God, the Creator, decides which unalienable rights each man has, in a kind of continuous selective endowment.

The Declaration goes on to explain that the decision to sever "political bonds" from Britain is based on a string of grievances. The final version states: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations ... evinces a design to reduce them [men] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government..."

Jefferson had used the word "power" instead of "despotism." The difference is subtle, but the dictionary defines despotism as "oppressive absolute power and authority exerted by government; rule by a despot." While "despotism" more accurately links the list of grievances to the oppressive rule of King George III, the word also moves away from the possible parallel between the colonist's suffering under the power of the king and a slave suffering under the power of a master.

If these word changes seem too subtle and open to argument, there is a section of Jefferson's first draft, approved by the committee of five, that speaks specifically about slavery. That section was left out of the final Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson wrote: "He [i.e., the despot King George III] 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."

Jefferson further suggests that attempts to pass laws forbidding the selling of slaves had been blocked by the king. "He has prostituted his Negative for Suppressing [i.e., shamelessly vetoed] every legislative Attempt to prohibit or to restrain an execrable Commerce, determined to keep open a Market where Men should be bought and sold, and that this assemblage of Horrors might want no Fact of distinguished Die ["Die" in the sense of trademark, either stamped from a metal die or perhaps inked (dyed); the sense of the phrase is "lack no certainty of the king's approval"], he is now exciting those very People to rise in Arms among us [slaves were offered their freedom if they would defect to the British side] and to purchase their Liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the People upon whom he also obtruded [imposed] 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."

That whole section was deleted from the final Declaration primarily by representatives from the southern states whose huge plantations could not be financially successful without the labor of unpaid slaves.

Despite the condemnation of slavery which Jefferson unsuccessfully tried to inject into the Declaration of Independence, he himself was the owner of large numbers of slaves throughout his lifetime. Founding Fathers George Washington and James Madison were slave owners also. Yet all three of these men wrote denouncements of slavery.

Ralph Ketcham's "Selected Writings of James Madison," notes that "In private letters, Madison referred to slavery as a 'dreadful calamity' and a 'sad blot on our free Country,' and he wrote to Frances Wright on Sept. 1, 1825: 'The magnitude of this evil among us is so deeply felt, and so universally acknowledged, that no merit could be greater than that of devising a satisfactory remedy for it.'"

Jared Sparks who published "The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private," portrays Washington as a man whose thoughts on slavery changed as he matured. He wrote "I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery."

In his will, Washington decreed that all the slaves he owned be freed, taught to read and write and taught a useful occupation.