Jefferson's passage may have been regarded as too inflammatory and too likely to lose the revolution support even (or especially) in Jefferson's Virginia. Delegates may also have thought that blaming George III for slavery and the slave trade was going too far and ultimately nonsensical. Some might have disliked the implied threat to the slave trade in the passage, but there were many other possible grounds for objection.
And there were other changes presented to the draft. Maybe they were all presented together in an "omnibus" motion and people who had no objection to the slavery passage voted for the motion because it included other changes that they thought were important.
The Committee of the Five didn't take the condemnation of the slave trade out, but they may have toned it down a bit. Here is Jefferson's original "rough draught":
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's 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. 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 to 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, & 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.
That made slavery and the slave trade more prominent a part of the document than it was in the draft submitted by the Five. It would have opened up the Congress to bitter and counterproductive debates. The objections of Adams, Franklin, Livingston, and Sherman were likely to the language and prominence of the passage. Their objections weren't strong enough to have them entirely delete Jefferson's condemnation of the king for enslaving Africans.
Jefferson's verbiage put the blame on the king and his ministers. It didn't portray his fellow delegates or fellow colonists as bad people. The Founders didn't think of themselves in that way. Jefferson didn't think of himself that way either. The Founders were doing what they thought was right and focusing on what was necessary at the time, but they articulated a general principle that had other applications as well as the immediate one, and many went on to act on that principle in their own states.
Secessionists claimed that the Continental Congress didn't mean Africans or slaves when it asserted that men had a right to liberty. I'd say that the Founders were thinking of themselves, and they meant "us," the colonists, but the Declaration didn't explicitly exclude Africans or slaves. It articulated a general truth that was true for other peoples around the world and true for slaves at home.
Jefferson and the Continental Congress didn't have to invoke a universal principle to declare their independence. They could haver relied on their rights as British subjects, or specifically restricted rights to White, property owning, English-speakers, or explicitly excluded Blacks or slaves from having any rights. They didn't. They asserted a general principle and people would have to work out who it applied to.
I do not doubt that this is true, but it may not necessarily be the complete picture. Others may have, and it would seem to me, likely would have objected as well, but South Carolina and Georgia were simply the first to make their opposition known.
As for the rest of the state delegates, maybe they objected to the passage as such, or maybe the SC and GA delegates were so uncompromising in their objections that the other delegates felt they had to give in or risk losing those two states.
It could be, but the way "Progressing America" portrays it, Georgia and South Carolina were the sole objectors and the sole cause of that language being stripped out.
That does not ring true to me. That seems like wishful thinking.
Jefferson's passage may have been regarded as too inflammatory and too likely to lose the revolution support even (or especially) in Jefferson's Virginia. Delegates may also have thought that blaming George III for slavery and the slave trade was going too far and ultimately nonsensical. Some might have disliked the implied threat to the slave trade in the passage, but there were many other possible grounds for objection.
That is exactly my thoughts on this topic.
That made slavery and the slave trade more prominent a part of the document than it was in the draft submitted by the Five.
It causes the document to lose focus. The primary intent was to justify independence, not to initiate a debate on the moral issues surrounding slavery.
It would have opened up the Congress to bitter and counterproductive debates.
Exactly. The debate in the larger community would also have been counterproductive because it did not advance, but instead would have hindered, the work necessary to be done to gain independence. They could get into this secondary debate after the war, which is in fact what they did.
Secessionists claimed that the Continental Congress didn't mean Africans or slaves when it asserted that men had a right to liberty. I'd say that the Founders were thinking of themselves, and they meant "us," the colonists, but the Declaration didn't explicitly exclude Africans or slaves.
I think that was Jefferson's intent, but the rest of the people were oblivious to this idea initially. The vast majority of colonist that read those words, saw them as referring to themselves, without much, if any, thought being given to the slaves.
Jefferson and the Continental Congress didn't have to invoke a universal principle to declare their independence.
They pretty much did. If you read the writings on "Natural Law" during that era, you find that they dealt in broad principles regarding the relationship between God and Man. In order to fit into the framework of natural law which declared they had a right to independence and a right to govern themselves, you had to acknowledge that these rights applied to all men.
You should take a look at "Lex Rex" (Law and the King, Samuel Rutherford, 1644) for a feel of how they looked at natural law.