eft them slavery as a
curse and reproach us as having originally introduced the system among
them. Admitting, as is the fact, that slavery did commence when the
colonies were subject to the mother country admitting that the petitions
for its discontinuance were disregarded, still there was nothing to
prevent immediate manumission at the time of the acknowledgement of
their independence by Great Britain. They had then everything to
recommence they had to select a new form of government, and to decide
upon new laws; they pronounced, in their declaration, that "all men were
equal;" and yet, in the face of this declaration, and their solemn
invocation to the Deity, the negroes, in _their_ fetters, pleaded to
them in vain.

I had always thought that this sad omission, which has left such an
anomaly in the Declaration of Independence as to have made it the taunt
and reproach of the Americans by the whole civilised world, did really
arise from forgetfulness; that, as is but too often the case, when we
are ourselves made happy, the Americans in their joy at their own
deliverance from the foreign yoke, and the repossessing themselves of
their own rights, had been too much engrossed to occupy themselves with
the undeniable claims of others. But I was mistaken; such was not the
case, as I shall presently show.

In the course of one of my sojourns in Philadelphia, Mr Vaughan, of the
Athenium of that city, stated to me that he had found the _original
draft_ of the Declaration of Independence, in the hand-writing of Mr
Jefferson, and that it was curious to remark the alterations which had
been made previous to the adoption of the manifesto which was afterwards
promulgated. It was to Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin, that was
entrusted the primary drawing up of this important document, which was
then submitted to others, and ultimately to the Convention, for approval
and it appears that the question of slavery had NOT been overlooked when
the document was first framed, as the following clause, inserted in the
original draft by Mr Jefferson, (but _expunged_ when it was laid before
the Convention,) will sufficiently prove. After enumerating the grounds
upon which they threw off their allegiance to the king of England, the
Declaration continued in Jefferson's nervous style:

"He [the king] has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating its most sacred rights of _life and liberty_, in the person of
a distant people who n