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To: BroJoeK
“In fact, there were no slave-revolts — zero, zip, nada slave revolts, at that time.”

Let's try to reel in some line here.

Jefferson writes in an early draft of the DOI:

“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 & 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 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 has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

This passage contains at least two grievances; let's look at the one where Jefferson writes of “those very people”, “rise in arms”, and murder(ing).

To me, Jefferson is writing here about slaves rising in arms and murdering their masters.

Can you and I agree on that much?

418 posted on 12/07/2017 2:55:03 PM PST by jeffersondem
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To: jeffersondem
jeffersondem: "To me, Jefferson is writing here about slaves rising in arms and murdering their masters.
Can you and I agree on that much? "

Sure, in the deleted paragraph, Jefferson is talking about British imposed slavery.
But Dunmore's proclamation did not call for "murdering their masters" and that may help explain the paragraph's deletion.

Just so we're clear, here again is what Dunmore did call for:

Not insurrection, not murder, but joining the British army.

424 posted on 12/08/2017 3:36:56 AM PST by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective...)
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