Slavery and The Phrase
The contradiction between the claim that "all men are created equal" and the existence of American slavery attracted comment when the Declaration of Independence was first published. Congress, having made a few changes in wording, deleted nearly a fourth of the draft before publication, removing a passage critical of the slave trade, and many members of Congress, Jefferson included, owned slaves. In 1776, abolitionist Thomas Day responding to the hypocrisy in the Declaration wrote:
If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.
Read more about this topic: All Men Are Created Equal
Famous quotes containing the words slavery and, slavery and/or phrase:
“Shatter the icons of slavery and fear.
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the leer
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—Dudley Randall (b. 1914)
“In nothing was slavery so savage and relentless as in its attempted destruction of the family instincts of the Negro race in America. Individuals, not families; shelters, not homes; herding, not marriages, were the cardinal sins in that system of horrors.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)