v After reading the Declaration of Independence answer the following questions in your INITIAL post:
v What were Jefferson’s primary purposes in writing the Declaration of Independence? What is the function of
each section?
v Finally, read the following paragraph which was OMITTED from the final draft of the D of I.
He [George III] 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 [royal veto] for suppressing
every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce…. He is now exciting those very
people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has 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.
v Why was Jefferson’s clause on the slave trade omitted from the final draft of the Constitution?What were
Jefferson’s primary purposes in writing the Declaration of Independence? What is the function of each section?
Why was Jefferson’s clause on the slave trade omitted from the final draft of the Constitution?