12/13/2023 0 Comments Declaration of independence words“There are few clean hands here,” Janes writes “at least a third of the signers (of the Declaration) were slaveholders and even in northern states abolition was gradual.” Janes also notes Jefferson’s own “deeply conflicted position” on the subject, as the founding father owned 180 slaves at the time, and 87 more by 1822 - none of whom were freed upon his death. The site, the creation of UW history professor Quintard Taylor, is a 13,000-page online reference center dedicated to providing information on African-American history, “and on the history of the more than one billion people of African ancestry around the world.” Janes, long interested in doing an episode on the idea of deletion, was reading the website when he was reminded of the lines cut from the Declaration. Jefferson himself, years later, claimed the words were “struck out in complaisance to South Carolina & Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves.” In his podcast, Janes takes the listener through what’s known - and still unknown - about the removal of the passage, which was but one of dozens of edits to the Declaration. ![]() “Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold,” the lost passage continues, “he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.” The deleted words - beginning with “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him …” - were a condemnation of George III, “the Christian King of Great Britain,” and his participation in and perpetuation of the slave trade. The Declaration of Independence’s deleted passage on slavery, 1776
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