[DiogenesLamp]

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.

Everyone but Jefferson. He was the *ONLY* Southerner on the committee.

John Adams, representative of Massachusetts
Thomas Jefferson, representative of Virginia
Benjamin Franklin, representative of Pennsylvania
Roger Sherman, representative of Connecticut
Robert Livingston, representative of New York

Pretty hard sell when the Northerners are the majority and *THEY* are against what the Southerner wrote.

Clearly the vote was either 3/2 or 4/1, with the Northern majority voting to get rid of it.

I personally think the vote was 4/1 because none of those men were stupid.

[BroJoeK]

Regarding how Jefferson's anti-slavery text got deleted from the Declaration of Independence, DiogenesLamp argues it was Northerners, not Southerners, who deleted Jefferson's words:

DiogenesLamp: "Everyone but Jefferson. He was the *ONLY* Southerner on the committee...
Pretty hard sell when the Northerners are the majority and *THEY* are against what the Southerner wrote.
Clearly the vote was either 3/2 or 4/1, with the Northern majority voting to get rid of it."

Declaration Committee of Five: Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Sherman & Livingston:

So, the issue here is whether Jefferson's anti-slavery text was deleted by the Declaration committee of five, or by the entire Congress of 56 delegates.
If it was deleted by the five committee members, then DiogenesLamp has to be correct that the others were all Northerners and so they must have voted against Jefferson's anti-slavery words.

However, that's not what history tells us.
Rather history says Jefferson's text was deleted by the entire Congress of 56 delegates:

"What is known is that the 33-year-old Jefferson, who composed the Declaration between June 11 and June 28, 1776, sent a rough draft to members of a pre-selected committee, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, for edits ahead of its presentation to Congress.
Between July 1 and July 3, congressional delegates debated the document, during which time they excised Jefferson’s anti-slavery clause."

So, apparently, Jefferson's words made it through the mostly Northern declaration committee, but were deleted during Congressional debate.
One way we know this for certain is from Jefferson himself:

"Decades later, in his autobiography, Jefferson primarily blamed two Southern states for the clause’s removal, while acknowledging the North’s role as well:

'The clause...reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in compliance 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 these censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.' "

So, according to Jefferson himself, it was South Carolina and Georgia who insisted on deleting his anti-slavery words, with a slight acquiescence from some northern slave traders -- ahem... ahaw... Rhode Island?

Since important votes had to be unanimous, it only needed South Carolina and Georgia in opposition to delete Jefferson's anti-slavery text, with no need to force Northern delegates to put their mouths where their money was. 😉

56 delegates discussed and deleted Jefferson's anti-slavery text: