Well.....
The question of slavery did indeed come up in 1776, as related to Jefferson's famous deleted paragraph blaming King George for American slavery.
Jefferson's sincere words were a stinging indictment of both slavery and British laws enforcing it.
Now the story as to how Jefferson's anti-slavery paragraph got deleted from our Declaration of Independence -- it's a bit vague, since Jefferson himself didn't name individuals and also claimed some of them were northerners.
But was there an actual vote and do we know how many supported or opposed it?
No, of course not, but it's easy to imagine someone as anti-slavery as Pennsylvania's ultimate diplomat, Benjamin Franklin, saying, "let's set this one on the table for another day".
Jefferson wrote:
- "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 thithe...
...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."