...complaint against the English is that they brought slavery to America. Jefferson called slavery "a cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty." Jefferson's passage — which Georgia and South Carolina insisted on removing from the Declaration...

...and most American whites were not prepared to accept Jefferson's claim that the slave system was "a cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty." But by December 1833, in the wake of Britain's legal emancipation of nearly eight hundred thousand...

...Jefferson's rough draft of the declaration included an angry condemnation of King George III for having "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...

...owned slaves, assailed King George III (1738-1820) for allowing the importation of slaves: "He 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...

...contended, 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...

...property: 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...

...slaves' freedom present in the Summary, is also evident in the original draft of the Declaration: He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating...carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL...

...called "the vehement philippic against Negro slavery," Jefferson charged King George III with waging "cruel war against human nature itself, violating...sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere,...

...conclude?3 We also discussed the following clause, removed from the final draft of the Declaration: he 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...

...would include a line in his draft of the Declaration, later removed, denouncing the slave trade as a "cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people." But he does not denounce slavery itself.2 As he proclaims...