Many people know famous lines from the Declaration of Independence such as "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal- but what many people do not know is that these lines are the result of revisions that were made to the original Declaration. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration in June of 1776, but over a one-month period the document was revised and about eighty-six changes had been made to the original copy. Only after these changes were made did Congress accept and pass the Declaration of Independence, on July 4th of 1776, which announced and justified the separation of the 13 colonies from Great Britain. There were a number of additions, deletions, and changes of wording that were made to the document. Of these changes was the deletion of an entire passage about slavery. The passage read as follows:.
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, captivating and 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 and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that his assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exiting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has denied them, and murdering the people upon 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.
Deleting this passage from the Declaration of Independence had a great impact on United States history.
