A History of the American People

mankind' by giving its reasons; the second, with its riveting first sentence, the kernel of the
whole: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' After that sentence, the reader, any reader-even George III-is compelled to read on. The Committee found it necessary to make few changes in Jefferson's draft. Franklin, the practical man, toned down Jefferson's grandiloquence-thus truths, from beingsacred and
undeniable' became self-evident,' a masterly improvement. But in general the four others were delighted with Jefferson's work, as well they might be. Congress was a different matter because at the heart of America's claim to liberty there was a black hole. What of the slaves? How could Congress say thatall men are created equal' when
there were 600,000 blacks scattered through the colonies, and concentrated in some of them in
huge numbers, who were by law treated as chattels and enjoyed no rights at all? Jefferson and the
other members of the Committee tried to up-end this argument-rather dishonestly, one is bound
to say-by blaming American slavery on the British and King George. The original draft charged
that the King had waged a cruel war against human nature' by attacking adistant people' and
'captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere.' But when the draft went
before the full Congress, on June 28, the Southern delegates were not having this. Those from
South Carolina, in particular, were not prepared to accept any admission that slavery was wrong
and especially the acknowledgment that it violated the most sacred rights of life and liberty.' If the Declaration said that, then the logical consequence was to free all the slaves forthwith. So the slavery passage was removed, the first of the many compromises over the issue during the next eighty years, until it was finally resolved in an ocean of tears and blood. However, the word equality' remained in the text, and the fact that it did so was, as it were, a constitutional
guarantee that, eventually, the glaring anomaly behind the Declaration would be rectified.
The Congress debated the draft for three days. Paradoxically, delegates spent little time going
over the fundamental principles it enshrined, because the bulk of the Declaration presented the
specific and detailed case against Britain, and more particularly against the King. The
Revolutionaries were determined to scrap the pretense that they distinguished between evil
ministers and a king who could do no wrong,' and renounce their allegiance to the crown once and for all. So they fussed over the indictment of the King, to them the core of the document, and left its constitutional and ideological framework, apart from the slavery point, largely intact. This was just as well. If Congress had chosen to argue over Jefferson's sweeping assumptions and propositions, and resolve their differences with verbal compromises, the magic wrought by his pen would surely have been exorcized, and the world would have been poorer in consequence. As it was the text was approved on July 2, New York still abstaining, and on July 4 all the colonies formally adopted what was called, to give it its correct title,The Unanimous
Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America.' At the time, and often since, Tom Paine
was credited with its authorship, which did not help to endear it to the British, where he was (and
still is) regarded with abhorrence. In fact he had nothing to do with it directly, but the term
United States' is certainly his. On July 8 it was read publicly in the State House Yard and the Liberty Bell rung. The royal coat of arms was torn down and burned. On August z it was engrossed on parchment and signed by all the delegates. Whereupon (according to John Hancock) Franklin remarked:Well, Gentlemen, we must now hang together, or we shall most
assuredly hang separately. Interestingly enough, Cromwell had made the same remark to the Earl
of Manchester at the beginning of the English Civil War 136 years earlier.