Black History Month – 1776 – Stricken from The Declaration of Independence

King George has waged cruel war on 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 thither.

During the conflicts with the British army in the 1760s, some African Americans, like Crispus Attucks displayed their devotion to the partriot cause.  He was in fact, the first man to die in the Revolutionary War.  In April of 1776, representatives of the 13 colonies met in the Continental Congress and voted to halt the slave trade, no necessarily motivated by revolutionary idealism but by the desire to disrupt British trade. In July, the Continental Congress again met and debated slavery.  In the first version of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote a strong indictment of King George for promoting slavery. Southern states demanded that be removed and it was but the final version still accused the king of stirring up domestic insurrections — namely the acts of slave rebellion instigated by Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation.

Issued in 1775, Dunmore, in an effort to undermine patriot resolve, declared that any enslaved person who fled his master and would serve with loyalty towards Great Britain, would secure their freedom. By the wars end between a couple thousand enslaved African Americans in Virginia fled to British lines. Some were organized into a fighting unit known as Dunmore’s Ethiopian Brigade. On their tunics they wore the slogan, “From Slavery to Freedom.”

The Declaration of Independence immediately became the world’s most well known manifesto celebrating human rights and personal freedom, yet when he wrote it, Thomas Jefferson owned over 200 slaves, so white privilege got an early start.