On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed five members to draft a declaration of independence citing the grievances of the colonists against King George of England: John Adams (Massachusetts), Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania), Thomas Jefferson (Virginia), Robert Livingston (New York), and Roger Sherman (Connecticut). After agreeing to the general outline, the committee tasked Thomas Jefferson to compose the statement. Included in his initial draft was the following paragraph referring to the King:

"-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 and  carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither, 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 and sold,] he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce [determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold]: 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 had deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."    

Although Jefferson was a southerner who owned slaves that he inherited from his father's estate, he abhorred slavery as a crime against humanity. The committee, fearing that the above statement would alienate the South and thus refuse to join the cause for independence, requested that Jefferson strike the paragraph. On July 3, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to remove the clause and requested the committee to issue a newly revised draft. Jefferson did so, and on July 4, members of the Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence that we have today. American history thence moved toward a tragic confrontation decades later which tore the country asunder before the institution of slavery was ended and men, women and children were emancipated and became inheritors of God's blessing of liberty and freedom.  

Submitted By Fr Stott