Futility Closet

First Draft, Best Draft

Posted in History by Greg Ross on July 28th, 2006

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Us_declaration_independence.jpg

Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a passage denouncing the slave trade:

He [George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & 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.

Congress removed it.