The anti-slavery clause was removed from the Declaration for Southern and Northern economic reasons.

Evidence

In his notes on the proceedings of the Second Continental Congress concerning this early draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote, “[T]he clause…reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina & Georgia who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. [O]ur Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.” Jefferson tried to justify American inaction on the trade in enslaved persons and on slavery by placing the blame on King George’s head, but the burden of culpability rested also on American shoulders in both the North and the South. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1252

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the reframing argument that American culpability for slavery predates and exceeds British blame — connects to the Wilentz/Revolutionary-War-cause dispute the reader is tracking as a case study.
• SEED: An essay angle: how founders’ own notes document the exact moment a moral principle was edited out for political economy — the ‘deleted clause’ as a historiographical artifact.