"The hardest thing for a man to do is to change long standing prejudices of belief,

but to succeed in doing it, is a test of one's humility"

~ Benjamin Franklin

Slavery is considered America's "original sin". Slavery was practiced in both Northern and Southern states; however, Southern slave owners considered slavery and the slave trade its life blood for working the massive plantation fields.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration, critics saw a glaring contradiction: Many of the colonists who sought freedom from British tyranny themselves bought and sold human beings. By underpinning America’s young economy with the brutal institution of chattel slavery, they deprived roughly one-fifth of the population of their own “inalienable” right to liberty. 

What isn't widely known is that in an early draft of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson drafted a 168-word passage condemned slavery as one of the many evils foisted upon the colonies by the British crown. However, the passage was cut from the final wording. That omission would create a legacy of exclusion for people of African descent that resulted in centuries of struggle over basic human and civil rights.

Between July 1 and July 3, congressional delegates debated the document, during which time they excised Jefferson’s anti-slavery clause. The removed passage read:

"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 slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither."  ~ Thomas Jefferson

In his autobiography, Jefferson primarily blamed two Southern states for the clause’s removal, while acknowledging the North’s role as well:   

"The clause...reprobating [sic] the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in compliance 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. Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under these censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”  ~ Thomas Jefferson

Source:

History Channel online. 

Why Thomas Jefferson’s Anti-Slavery Passage Was Removed from the Declaration of Independence. 

By: Yohuru Williams. Updated: June 26, 2023 | Original: June 29, 2020. 

https://www.history.com/news/declaration-of-independence-deleted-anti-slavery-clause-jefferson)

From Encyclopedia Britannica