He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & 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.
That was taken out of the finished document. I don't think we know what the vote was. Jefferson says Georgia and South Carolina objected, but also blames some Northerners. But that Jefferson wrote it and most of the delegates don't seem to have objected indicates that many of the Founders were well aware of the contradiction between slavery and the "most sacred rights of life & liberty."
"The principle of self-determination" is an idea whose content and limits have to be worked out by people as new cases come up. If the Founders did not believe that enslaved people had the right to self-determination, then it's already clear that they believed that that principle had its limits.
But I don't think you're being serious. The Founders had one thing to worry about: winning independence from Britain. They weren't going to jeopardize that by pursuing other goals. But they based their desire for self-determination on principles, and the recognized that those principles could be applied to other situations. It's not about how we reinterpret them. It's about how many of them interpreted their own beliefs.
We know it was a majority. I seem to recall everyone on the committee of five was against including such inflammatory commentary in the document. It benefited them not at all, and alienated states they would need.
But that Jefferson wrote it and most of the delegates don't seem to have objected indicates that many of the Founders were well aware of the contradiction between slavery and the "most sacred rights of life & liberty."
Well they had Jefferson right there telling them this, but this does not mean that the representatives of the states, or the people of those states had given it any thought until well after the Declaration had been written and signed.
Yes, the committee of five were well aware of Jefferson's view on the issue of slavery, but they also understood the concept of what Lincoln said many years later. "One war at a time."
Their goal was to gain independence, not become embroiled in a philosophical fight that would wreck their chances of independence.
"The principle of self-determination" is an idea whose content and limits have to be worked out by people as new cases come up. If the Founders did not believe that enslaved people had the right to self-determination, then it's already clear that they believed that that principle had its limits.
The ideas of self determination were derived from previous essays on natural law, and many learned men of the time saw the one consequence to be the natural descendant of the original postulates about natural law, as outlined by people like Rutherford, Locke and so forth.
They didn't give much thought of it applying to these people that had been brought to North America from a land they all considered to be backward, savage, and barbaric.
But I don't think you're being serious. The Founders had one thing to worry about: winning independence from Britain.
You don't think i'm serious about this? This is exactly the thing I am serious about. They weren't pondering the philosophy of equality with slaves, they were writing a justification for separating from England, and that is *ALL* they were trying to do.
And for this reason I say citing 1776 and the phrase "all men are created equal" is an attempt to redefine the purpose of the Declaration to be something it was never intended to be.
I.E. Dishonest.
They weren't going to jeopardize that by pursuing other goals
You gotta be kidding me.
Yes, they would very greatly jeopardize that by pursuing any criticism of slavery. The Southern states had to be cajoled into joining the effort to gain independence, because they were relatively satisfied remaining under British rule. It was only through the efforts of Francis Marion provoking the British to run roughshod over the peoples of these states that ever convinced the Southern states to go along with efforts at independence.
I've seen the debates on the slavery issue in the US Constitution, and they flat out admit that if they made an issue of it, there would be no Union, and the British would quickly conquer the un-unified Union.
The Northern representatives *SAID* so, and words to the effect that it would be better to have a Union with slavery, than no Union at all.
I might even be able to find a link to this discussion, but so too might you.
No, the 1776 people did *NOT* want to focus on anything but the single necessity of separating from Britain. Touching slavery in the states where it was profitable at the time would be like touching the third rail of the subway system.
Nobody was dumb enough to do that, except perhaps slave owning Jefferson from a slave owning state. :)