The complete article is available here.
Principle 4: God has created human beings equal in value, and He intends for them to be treated with dignity and respect.
Here we focus on the phrase, “all men are created equal.” Jefferson’s original words were these: “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.…” After the gifted writer’s colleagues had made their revisions, the statement read, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Of course, the idea that all men are created equal is quite radical, and it was radical then as well.
Inevitably, someone will ask, Why did the Founders say this but not abolish slavery? It’s an important question. Yet to be fair we must
evaluate our Founders not in light of our own culture, but in light of theirs; America’s “Founders were born into a society that permitted slavery.”1 Despite this, some swam against the tide as they expressed resistance and even opposition to the practice.
Thomas Jefferson, himself a slaveowner, was one such man. In his original draft of the Declaration, he took the King of England to task for his role in the slave trade. He wrote,
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s 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. 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 & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce; 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 has deprived them, & 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.
In this paragraph, Jefferson harshly condemned King George III; yet ironically, he also condemned the slaves by implication, at least with regard to certain actions (not, we should note, with regard to the color of their skin.) Still, we are foolish to ignore the strength of Jefferson’s case against slavery, one that was all the more remarkable because it was penned during an era when, and in a culture where, the practice was embedded in everyday life. We can scratch our heads in bewilderment over what to us appears to be Jefferson’s hypocrisy; but more realistically, doesn’t it appear that these are the actions of a man whose conscience has been stirred, but who knows he cannot overturn this aspect of the cultural landscape in a split second?
Moreover, Jefferson’s own involvement in the institution of slavery was deep, yet not fully because of his own conscious choices. Again, the Virginian was born at a time when slavery was the order of the day. Can we not understand he personally finds it difficult at one moment in time to do a complete about-face regarding the matter?
Do not misunderstand. I’m not defending slavery—not for a New York minute. I’m merely saying Jefferson’s action here represents a step in the right direction—for him and for a nation on the cusp of its birth. For articles that offer a more thorough discussion of the issue of slavery, racism, and the Founders, visit this page.
When the edits were made, the paragraph was struck, so the Declaration did not, and does not, condemn slavery explicitly. Yet it does so implicitly! Statements that remained in the document would prove in the decades ahead to be powerful weapons against institutional slavery and other societal wrongs. While
the Founders did not immediately free the slaves, give votes to their wives, or invite the Indian tribes to sign the Declaration with them…all of the greatest advocates for human equality in America—Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Suffragettes, Martin Luther King Jr.—pointed to this passage in the Declaration to give force to their demands for justice.2
Thus, the concept that “all men are created equal” became one of the most powerful ever upheld by a nation. We can be grateful for this in many ways, but a word of warning is in order.
In recent decades, Americans foolishly have rallied around the banner of equality alone when, in the original statement on America’s “birth certificate,” the meaning of the word equal is informed, tempered, and shaped by the word created. Created, in turn, is linked inseparably to the term Creator. The implications of these realities, of course, are enormous.
In the Declaration of Independence, the the meaning of the word equal is informed, tempered, and shaped by the word created. Created, in turn, is linked inseparably to the term Creator.
We must realize this and let it sink in! The equality among men that Jefferson, the Committee of Five, and the Second Continental Congress promoted and upheld is not one achieved through societal manipulation or government intervention, but one that already exists. It is an equality government has a duty to recognize and protect, a God-given attribute in which unalienable rights are deeply rooted and in which they find their sustenance. We have ignored this point to our own peril, and we must rediscover it and appreciate it once again.
This excerpt is has been taken from Part 2 of a 3-part series highlighting ten bedrock principles of liberty embedded in the Declaration of Independence.
Copyright © 2019 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image credit: Liberty Bell Postage Stamp, 1926 — to learn more about the Liberty Bell, go here.
Notes:
1William J. Bennett, America, the Last Best Hope—Volume 1: From the Age of Discovery to a World at War, 1492-1914, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006), 122.
2Bennett, 86.