Discussion for article #238129
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But happily [snark], they left IN the bit about the “merciless Indian savages.”
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The line, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration was taken from the Enlightenment’s Immanual Kant’s line about the rights all men have, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” Jefferson changed the line because, in 1776, the term “property” also meant slaves.
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The Declaration of Independence was just that, a declaration, with symbolic but no binding legal value. That there was anti-slavery sentiment prior to the Revolution is not news. In fact, the Constitutional Convention a decade later was at loggerheads over the issue until the northern reps backed down for the sake of geographical unity of with the southern states in one nation. Hence, the slavery related clauses in the Consitution. Would have, could have, etc., don’t count in defining the social foundation of America as the home of slavery.
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Actually “life, liberty, and the pursuit of property” comes from John Locke.
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Especially considering that by 1772, Chief Justice Mansfield had declared slavery illegal in England and Jefferson and the founding fathers would surely have been aware of that.
In 1783 The English House of Commons debated a bill to abolish the human trade on moral grounds, and in 1833, Parliament outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire.
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If I remember correctly the one Southern Rep from the State that objected the strongest was the very Aristocratic Rep from South Carolina. Believe he was actually strongly in favor of establishing an Aristocratic Hierarchy along with a King.
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My opinion exactly. from then on American history is written in blood
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I believe Locke’s line was "Life, liberty and property,’ not “pursuit of property.”
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Mansfield said slavery was unknown to the Common Law of England and thus could exist in England only by statute. That was why you saw southern states embedding slavery into their constitutions–because all of the Original 13 and most of the later states adopted Common Law in toto by their constitutions or by statute, so you had to specifically say “except slavery” somewhere.
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Jefferson’s aspirations on slavery were very admirable for his time…his paradoxical and maddening stands against slavery while owning slaves notwithstanding. Further, Jefferson blamed the removal of the passage in his draft on delegates from South Carolina and Georgia and Northern delegates who represented merchants who were at the time actively involved in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Even then, corporate interests trumped all else.
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And he wants to know what’s the latest on the # AskBobby hashtag!
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Fellow marchers, so much has changed in 50 years. We have endured war and we’ve fashioned peace. We’ve seen technological wonders that touch every aspect of our lives. We take for granted conveniences that our parents could have scarcely imagined. But what has not changed is the imperative of citizenship; that willingness of a 26-year-old deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young mother of five to decide they loved this country so much that they’d risk everything to realize its promise.
That’s what it means to love America. That’s what it means to believe in America. That’s what it means when we say America is exceptional.
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Later in his life, Jefferson wrote that an overriding reason for removing this passage from the Declaration of Independence was bureaucratic: Georgia and South Carolina were refusing to sign it because of that paragraph. Their delegates forced the revisions.
For me, this has come to cement South Carolina, Georgia, and Thomas Jefferson’s place at the epicenter of American racism.
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Excellent point.
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Vermont is my “adopted” state, having lived here 15 years. I’m proud of so much. For example, we’re the only state that doesn’t have a McDonald’s in the capital city or that we only have (at this time) 5 or 6 Starbucks in the whole state. I think we were one of the first states to outlaw billboards. We were one of the first for civil unions (but sort of slow on the marriage equality side). As of 2014, we offer illegal aliens “Operator Privilege Cards” tantamount to driver’s licenses. We still have town meeting day, where you legally can get off work, go to a town meeting, and vote directly on the budget – item by item. But this has always been one of my favorites:
Slavery in Vermont. The newly formed state, which broke away from New York, abolished slavery outright in its constitution, dated July 8, 1777.
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ponder these implications… George and his fellow rich royals could not defy the popular will in England against slavery, so they continued it in the New World, where their own people could claim detachment even though they consumed the cotton that made it tick.
Slavery was projected onto the colonies, and a new, crude class of semi-royals in the south was happy to carry the banner.
This is the wolf Jefferson references in his famous “wolf by the ears” quote, and the Civil War was how we cut loose of it. Jefferson was right, it was a very bloody affair. And the wolf still howls in the shadows.
But the thought that the wolf was originally the profitable pet of the tyrant king is intriguing, at least.
My two questions…
How much royal wealth was accumulated via slavery before the Revolution, and how well-attached were those post-revolution semi-royals in the south to their English lords after the Revolution?
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I’ve always thought it a wonder that original DC insider circle didn’t use the word “redskins”…
oh, wait…
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Professor Railton has seriously misread and misunderstood a key passage of the language deleted from the Declaration. The passage does not say that the slaves obtruded (forced themselves) upon the colonists. It says that King George obtruded (or forced) slavery on the colonies. That is an important distinction.
Jefferson is referring to an event in 1770 when King George prohibited the colony of Virginia from ending slavery.
The King in council, on Dec. 10, 1770, issued an instruction, under his own hand, commanding the governor of Virginia, " upon pain of the highest displeasure, to assent to no law by which the importation of slaves should be in any respect prohibited or obstructed." Jefferson, Henry, Lee, and other leading men anxiously desired to rid the colony of slavery. The Virginia Assembly addressed the King himself on the subject. They pleaded with him to remove all restraints upon their efforts to stop the importation of slaves, which they called " a very pernicious commerce." It is because of the King’s refusal to allow Virginia to end slavery that Jefferson wrote that the King had forced slavery on the colonists.
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Thanks for the comment. I agree that the deleted passage focuses on slavery as a crime of the King’s, imposed upon the colonists; but in that section, Jefferson is also defining the slaves as a present threat to the colonists, one that threatens the lives of the same people on whom the slaves have been “obtruded” (of course not of their own volition, but nonetheless). As a result, this moment does a few related things: frees the colonists of the burden of slavery (putting it all on England/the King); describes the horror of slavery as a past event (“former crimes”) as opposed to the present threat the slaves pose; and thus, to my mind, makes the colonists into victims at least as much as (and in the present more than) the slaves. (And I hear you on 1770, but of course the histories of slavery and the slave trade in Virginia and the US go back far further and include many more events and moments, as does Jefferson’s own conflicted relationship to those histories.)
Since, I would argue, the framing in this deleted section has been a model for much of our subsequent communal conversation about slavery (sure, it was horrible for the slaves, but look what it did to the rest of us and our nation overall!), I wanted to stress that part of Jefferson’s emphasis there as well.
Thanks,
Ben
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