Reviewing Thomas Jefferson's rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, I found a surprise. One of the clauses that was not included in the final draft basically calls King George III out for approving of, or at least not disapproving of, slave markets.
The clause reads: "[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"
Imagine how different the history of the Unites States might have been had this sentence not been removed from the Declaration of Independence. In fact, yeah, let's imagine that. And talk about it.
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Now, to be honest, I imagine this did not make it into the final Declaration for the same reason similar language never really flew on a national level for a long time: the South. Virginia was the biggest state at the time, and the south as a whole wasn't exactly a tiny portion of the new United States. I take it most likely that the nation was not in a position to criticize the slave trade and that is why this clause was removed. Just my two cents.
Still, rather curious to see what would happen if, by all luck and chance, this language were retained in the final Declaration.
The clause reads: "[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"
Imagine how different the history of the Unites States might have been had this sentence not been removed from the Declaration of Independence. In fact, yeah, let's imagine that. And talk about it.
- - - - -
Now, to be honest, I imagine this did not make it into the final Declaration for the same reason similar language never really flew on a national level for a long time: the South. Virginia was the biggest state at the time, and the south as a whole wasn't exactly a tiny portion of the new United States. I take it most likely that the nation was not in a position to criticize the slave trade and that is why this clause was removed. Just my two cents.
Still, rather curious to see what would happen if, by all luck and chance, this language were retained in the final Declaration.
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