But for two passages in the Committee of Five's draft that were rejected by the Committee of the Whole the work was accepted without any other major changes. One was a critical reference to the English people and the other was a denunciation of the slave trade and of slavery itself.
In other words, the five might have thought the passage ill-advised, but they left it in the draft they submitted to the whole Continental Congress, "the Committee of the Whole."
I don't know how the Continental Congress made its decisions or how the debate went. Do we have anything more that Jefferson's sentence or two about why the passage was removed? He was not without an ax to grind in his later years. Did all the Virginians really agree with him? Were the Northerners who opposed the passage really more concerned about the slave trade than about keeping South Carolina and Georgia in the union? Do we know?
.
What the Founders were trying to do in the immediate situation and what they believed, or came to believe, weren't necessarily the same thing. I said that you aren't being serious because you take the immediate concern of the Founders as the whole of their thinking on the subject of human rights, liberty, and equality.
Lincoln has been attacked by modern historians for not being poetic or philosophical in the Emancipation Proclamation. Richard Hofstadter said that the Proclamation "had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading." But the Emancipation Proclamation was intended to fulfill a specific purpose. It's similar for the Constitution. The Declaration was a little more than that. As well as breaking with England and making the case for independence, Jefferson was being philosophical and stating general truths in an exalted and elevated way. You can't just throw that whole side of the Declaration away.
.
Can you really say that Jefferson was willing to free the slaves in 1776? He wasn't even willing to free his own slaves when he died 50 years later. But other delegates went back to their states and drafted emancipation laws and emancipation plans. It's true that they didn't want to share the government or the country with large number of African-Americans, but they did take the Declaration's message about the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to heart.
That is, what they would have said at the time is:
(Parag. written as if the year is 1775) Slavery is the crown's slavery, and these vetoed laws or otherwise unenforced laws by crown governors is "them" imposing on us a system we do not want against our will. (Parag. written as if the year is 1775)
But after 1776, then each state has to take upon the responsibility for itself. Many states abolished, some sooner than others, once they no longer had the crown veto stopping them.
Where do we get this "South Carolina and Georgia" idea? Is it because these reps objected, while the rest remained silent? In parliamentary procedure, how many people have to make a motion before the topic is considered by the whole? Isn't it just two?
I find it ridiculous to believe that out of a committee made from reps of 13 slave states, that only two would make an issue of something they would see as damaging to their economic interests or damaging to the coalition.
In any case, whether it be the committee of the five, or the committee of the whole, they removed the problematic language.
Can you really say that Jefferson was willing to free the slaves in 1776? He wasn't even willing to free his own slaves when he died 50 years later. But other delegates went back to their states and drafted emancipation laws and emancipation plans.
Later. Later.
I have said many times that the Declaration inspired people afterward to consider this idea in the context of slaves, but the point here is that it wasn't the focus of the Declaration, as Lincoln implies it was in his speech.
The Declaration was on the very opposite side of Lincoln. It would rebuke him if it had a voice.