Although the issue of slavery was widely debated -- both the chattel slavery of Africans in America and the civil slavery that fired patriot rhetoric -- it is conspicuously absent from the final version of the Declaration. Yet in his rough draft, Jefferson railed against King George III for creating and sustaining the slave trade, describing it as "a cruel war against human nature."
When the document was presented to the Continental Congress on July 1, 1776, both northern and southern slaveholding delegates objected to its inclusion, and it was removed.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
NO, THE FOUNDERS WEREN'T SAINTS
That seems to be how the Baggers/Originalists look at them but that doesn't do them justice because it yanks them out of history. Perhaps the most nagging problem for the B/O crowd is slavery because right from the beginning it was a problem:
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