This was in an email sent to me 20 minutes ago from an Engineer I used to work with. Those that have never been to Monticello might find this of interest? https://www.monticello.org/thomas-j...n/transcript-of-the-rough-of-the-declaration/
Other links inside the above
Happy 248th birthday to the USA!
Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence contains the highlighted section below among the grievances against King George. It includes this insightful complaint. “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.” In other words, King George was benefitting from the British slave trade so much, he had thwarted every legislative attempt by colonists to outlaw it. The slave trade was eventually outlawed March 2, 1807 and became effective in 1808. Unfortunately, by then enough slaves had been imported to establish inter-generational slavery in the south. If you are wondering why this grievance isn’t in the final draft, it’s because South Carolina and Georgia rejected it. Imagine how different our nation’s history would have been if the Declaration of Independence had rejected slavery at the very inception of the United Stated.
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and 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 to 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 also obtruded 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.
Other links inside the above
Happy 248th birthday to the USA!
Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence contains the highlighted section below among the grievances against King George. It includes this insightful complaint. “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.” In other words, King George was benefitting from the British slave trade so much, he had thwarted every legislative attempt by colonists to outlaw it. The slave trade was eventually outlawed March 2, 1807 and became effective in 1808. Unfortunately, by then enough slaves had been imported to establish inter-generational slavery in the south. If you are wondering why this grievance isn’t in the final draft, it’s because South Carolina and Georgia rejected it. Imagine how different our nation’s history would have been if the Declaration of Independence had rejected slavery at the very inception of the United Stated.
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and 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 to 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 also obtruded 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.
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