Hence it was
that even as far back as 1699, a controversy sprang up between the
Colonies and the Home Government, upon the African Slavery question
--a controversy continuing with more or less vehemence down to the
Declaration of Independence itself.
It was this conviction that it was not alone an evil but a dangerous
evil, that induced Jefferson to embody in his original draft of that
Declaration a clause strongly condemnatory of the African Slave Trade--a
clause afterward omitted from it solely, he tells us, "in complaisance
to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never* attempted to restrain the
importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to
continue it," as well as in deference to the sensitiveness of Northern
people, who, though having few slaves themselves, "had been pretty
considerable carriers of them to others" a clause of the great
indictment of King George III., which, since it was not omitted for any
other reason than that just given, shows pretty conclusively that where
the fathers in that Declaration affirmed that "all men are created
equal," they included in the term "men," black as well as white, bond as
well as free; for the clause ran thus: "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.
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