I am not acquainted with any authoritative work that lends context to each of the complaints outlined in the DOL If one exists (and I'm sure that one does, somewhere) I would love to obtain a copy. In the meanwhile I'm forced by circumstance to rely on scattered readings and references for guidance.
If you'll pardon a bit of remedial contextualizing, understanding the message of the DOL starts with an understanding of the framework of the document itself. I can see why some call the Declaration of independence Jefferson's "finest endeavor". It's a masterpiece, both of construction and of import. It's logical sequence gracefully leads from one element to the next. The claims and substantiations also logically lead one to the next, arranged by severity.
I was taught to look first to the big picture, and then to it's components. Not like a halfwit who looks at a pock and claims to divine meaning for the moon, rather than looking at the moon in order to understand the pock.
The Declaration of independence is comprised of five elements:
• Preamble: the reasons for writing down the Declaration (from "WHEN, in the Course of human Events" to "declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.").
• Statement of beliefs: specifying what the undersigned believed, the philosophy behind the document (from "We hold these Truths to be self-evident" to "an absolute Tyranny over these States").
• List of complaints: the offenses that impelled the declaration (from "To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World" to "unfit to be the ruler of a free people").
• Statement of prior attempts to redress grievances: (From "Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren," to "Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.")
• A declaration of independence: (From "WE, therefore" to "and our sacred Honour.")
Each element is important in it's own right but the heart of the document - and the focus of this discussion is in the third section, List of Complaints.
I would agree that there is certainly room for "patriots vs.loyalists" infighting orchestrated and encouraged by the Brits as part of their complaint of undue interference. Likewise, we could cite examples of a proxy war of sorts being waged by indians against the colonists at the Brit's urging and upon their behalf. As seen in the outline (above) the authors were very precise in their engineering of this document. We know that the authors threw in everything except the kitchen sink. If they had it as a grievance they mentioned it.
So why didn't they mention slavery? Because delegates from South Carolina and Georgia threatened to pull out if it was included. Jefferson's claim of inciting slave rebellions was removed from the agenda and the reference deleted. You've seen the deleted passage before but here it is again - just so we can be clear on this point:
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and 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 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, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. (bold mine)Jefferson's complaint was the the Brits - who visited slavery upon the colonies in the first place - were actively interfering in the colonist's actions and desires to rid themselves of the foul practice. He could have (and wanted to) mention slavery but was overruled.
So what do we end up with? Inciting the natives? mentioned specifically. Reference to internecine warfare? Implied. Slave insurrections? Removed. My opinion is that he was referring to injun uprisings.
Read again what Jefferson said, for the first time:
“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.”
Slave states, north and south, did not like the censures.
You might take a look at this:
http://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history-primary-documents
And look at this:
And this:
http://colonialhall.com/histdocs/declaration/declarationanalysis27.php
Look here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h33.html
And here:
https://theamericanscholar.org/domestic-insurrection/
And here:
Yes, I know that recommending an internet search is dangerous. And, yes, I will wager the value of a medium-priced homosexual cupcake that you will find a college student, or maybe a professor, that will claim the term “domestic insurrection” refers to the practice of women burning braziers. But that is not factual.