There are at least three things, I believe, that needs to be reviewed to determine the meaning of the charge “he has excited domestic insurrections amongst us . . .”
The three things: the rough draft of the DOI, the final version of the DOI, and Jefferson's contemporaneous notes.
Some have said the charge referred to loyalists insurrections. In fact, in the rough draft there are these words: “he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property.”
But this charge of loyalist treason sponsored by the folks back home - and other intemperate remarks - were struck from the final version of the DOI.
Jefferson in his notes states why: “The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offense.”
Note the words, “struck out.”
Some say the reference to domestic insurrections refers to Indian warfare. The rough draft contains this charge: “he has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, & conditions of existence.” This stand- alone charge (rough draft) was separate from the soon-to-be struck loyalist treason reference, and separate from Jefferson's lengthy, anti-slavery philippic.
Compare the rough draft “merciless Indian savages” with the final draft “merciless Indian savages “ text. They are virtually the same. Net: Jefferson didn't mince words or use euphemisms when it came to merciless Indian savages. There is no mistaking when he referenced them.
So does that mean the term “excited domestic insurrections amongst us” refers to slave insurrections? Yes.
Read the text (rough draft) of the anti-slavery philippic.
“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 to slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportations 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 determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold 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 against us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”
There can be no doubt Jefferson was referring to slave rebellions when he wrote “exciting those very people to rise in arms against us . . .”
But what happened to all this language in the final version of the DOI?
Jefferson's notes tell us: “The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”
Thus the word slavery, and its condemnation, does not appear in the final DOI and the 50-plus words relating to rising in arms and murder is distilled to “he has excited domestic insurrections amongst us . . .”
It is helpful to consider these documents in the context of the Dunmore Proclamation and Virginia's responding resolution which began: “WHEREAS Lord Dunmore, by his proclamation, dated on board the ship William, off Norfolk, the 7th day of November 1775, hath offered freedom to such able-bodied slaves as are willing to join him, and take up arms, against the good people of this colony, giving thereby encouragement to a general insurrection . . .”