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You may not be grasping this, but Jefferson was just the writer. He was not the authority that gave the document force. The authority was the representatives of the 13 colonies. Thomas Jefferson did not dictate to them what would be in the document which would bear their signatures. They tasked him with writing it, and when he showed them his original drafts, they yanked out all the anti-slavery language, because the document was not, and was never intended to be about slavery, it was intended to be about the natural law right for states to be independent.

Trying to drag slavery into the document distracts and waters down it's central focus, and that is why the other members of the committee struck all that anti-slavery language out of the document.

At the time, all 13 colonies were slave states, and i'm confident the document would never have been signed if that anti-slavery language had been left in it.

The civil authority behind the declaration were the States themselves, not Thomas Jefferson, who was only part of the Virginia delegation.