Jefferson wanted to accuse the King of being responsible for bringing slavery to America in the first place.
The Founding Father's had every intention of dealing with slavery as an evil that had to be eliminated.
They might not have thought slaves equal in the sense of civil rights, but they did hold that all men were equal in human rights.
The early history of the Republic was the rise the anti-slavery sentiment that ended it in the North and was on the verge of ending it in the South until the cotton gin and the profitability of cotton. Only then did slavery began to be defended as a positive good instead of seen as an evil that would eventually be eliminated.
The Founder's made sure that slavery did not spread into the Northwest and wanted to stop it's spread.
“They might not have thought slaves equal in the sense of civil rights, but they did hold that all men were equal in human rights.”
That’s an interesting comment. Because of what “they” did to Indians and slaves before the Revolutionary War, and during, and after I did not realize the provisions of the Declaration of Independence were intended to apply to Indians and slaves.
I guess “merciless Indian savages” distracted my understanding.
Not in the *DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE* they didn't! They intended the Declaration to serve *1* purpose, and that was to articulate a legal and moral right to break away from England.
It was never intended by any of the representatives of the 13 states to be an expression of opinion on the issue of slavery.
That is a later day lie that has become popular because people *want* it to be true, but it is however not true at all.
In 1776, the document going to King George III was *NOT* a commentary on slavery. It was a legal and moral claim to the right of *INDEPENDENCE* and it was nothing else.
Whatever the founders other feelings on the matter of slavery, it was not their intention to express them in the Declaration of Independence.