Ficboy
Banned
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was writing up the Declaration of Independence and he planned to include this particular passage that would have condemned slavery but also Britain enlisting slaves into the army to attack America. The passage in question read:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its 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 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"
The passage was of course deleted at the behest of the Southern states of Georgia and South Carolina as well Northern merchants as noted by Jefferson himself in his 1821 autobiography:
"The clause...reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in compliance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under these censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others"
Suppose if the anti-slavery passage made it into the declaration. It would cause a big split amongst the Founding Fathers that supported slavery and opposed slavery respectively especially one that was written by the author of the document that officially made the Thirteen Colonies desires of independence very clear towards Britain. The Southern states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia would be stuck in a Morton's Fork situation on one hand they really hate how the Northern states including their allies such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison outright condemned slavery but at the same time Britain already issued a proclamation allowing slaves to fight on their side against their Patriot masters. Thus they would likely stay with the United States after independence.
Abolitionists would be emboldened by Jefferson's denouncement of slavery and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. They would likely claim the Declaration of Independence as an antislavery document and take the words "All men are created equal" even more literally than most did in OTL. The passage would be the impetus to encourage early efforts to abolish American slavery after the Revolution in the 1780s and 1790s. The Northern states were already moving forward to get rid of the institution which lasted up until the 1800s with New Jersey legally being the last to do it. If the United States does fully abolish the institution of slavery assuming Eli Whitney doesn't invent the cotton gin it would likely gradual emancipation similar to the United Kingdom which accelerated the process from 1807 until 1833 over the course of 26 years. For the South, they would lose its most valuable source of income and thus even with slavery abolished they would likely transition into another system similar to it likely peonage in which the employer would hand down debt to a laborer and hypothetically the latter was free but they would have to work to pay it off entirely but had little control over their conditions and the debt would increase over time thus putting them in a perpetual unfree state.
Whether there is a Civil War in this scenario depends on how antebellum politics in America develops after slavery. While there were other factors that led to it such as perceived Northern economic exploitative laws and subversion of the Constitution, slavery did play a role in the conflict more or less. On the other hand, the South basically having a plantation slavery style system of peonage might be the agitating thorn in sectional tensions with the North and lead to the war breaking out.
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its 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 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"
The passage was of course deleted at the behest of the Southern states of Georgia and South Carolina as well Northern merchants as noted by Jefferson himself in his 1821 autobiography:
"The clause...reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in compliance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under these censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others"
Suppose if the anti-slavery passage made it into the declaration. It would cause a big split amongst the Founding Fathers that supported slavery and opposed slavery respectively especially one that was written by the author of the document that officially made the Thirteen Colonies desires of independence very clear towards Britain. The Southern states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia would be stuck in a Morton's Fork situation on one hand they really hate how the Northern states including their allies such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison outright condemned slavery but at the same time Britain already issued a proclamation allowing slaves to fight on their side against their Patriot masters. Thus they would likely stay with the United States after independence.
Abolitionists would be emboldened by Jefferson's denouncement of slavery and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. They would likely claim the Declaration of Independence as an antislavery document and take the words "All men are created equal" even more literally than most did in OTL. The passage would be the impetus to encourage early efforts to abolish American slavery after the Revolution in the 1780s and 1790s. The Northern states were already moving forward to get rid of the institution which lasted up until the 1800s with New Jersey legally being the last to do it. If the United States does fully abolish the institution of slavery assuming Eli Whitney doesn't invent the cotton gin it would likely gradual emancipation similar to the United Kingdom which accelerated the process from 1807 until 1833 over the course of 26 years. For the South, they would lose its most valuable source of income and thus even with slavery abolished they would likely transition into another system similar to it likely peonage in which the employer would hand down debt to a laborer and hypothetically the latter was free but they would have to work to pay it off entirely but had little control over their conditions and the debt would increase over time thus putting them in a perpetual unfree state.
Whether there is a Civil War in this scenario depends on how antebellum politics in America develops after slavery. While there were other factors that led to it such as perceived Northern economic exploitative laws and subversion of the Constitution, slavery did play a role in the conflict more or less. On the other hand, the South basically having a plantation slavery style system of peonage might be the agitating thorn in sectional tensions with the North and lead to the war breaking out.