[Bull Snipe]

“It bugs me when people try to make the Declaration of Independence about slavery. It wasn’t”

Have to agree with you. The primary author of that document owned over 600 slaves in his life time. He only freed 10 of them, 5 while alive, and 5 in his will after his death.

He certainly was not going to make an issue of slavery in such an important document as the “Declaration of Independence”

[DiogenesLamp]

I believe he expressed his desire that all men be regarded as equal, but as a practical matter, he would be ruined if he had acted on it.

I have often pointed out Thomas Jefferson's hypocrisy on the issue, but I have also said many times that no one deserves more credit than he for setting in the motion the machinery that would eventually accomplish the task.

Those five words, said when they were, became like a snowball cast down the top of a mountain, and Thomas Jefferson was the man who threw it.