The Deleted Clause of the Declaration of Independence — Kevin Kallmes

The removal of the anti-slavery clause of the declaration was not the only time Jefferson’s efforts might have led to the premature end of the “peculiar institution.” Economist and cultural historian Thomas Sowell notes that Jefferson’s 1784 anti-slavery bill, which had the votes to pass but did not because of a single ill legislator’s absence from the floor, would have ended the expansion of slavery to any newly admitted states to the Union years before the Constitution’s infamous three-fifths compromise. One wonders if America would have seen a secessionist movement or Civil War, and how the economies of states from Alabama and Florida to Texas would have developed without slave labor, which in some states and counties constituted the majority.

Perhaps most interesting is that slave-owing founding fathers are still held up as epitomes of character, when slave-ownership is an obvious character flaw. Of course, the temptation in the South was enormous since slaves constituted a major capital stock of the region, especially for plantation owners like Washing and Jefferson. Northern business people were also tempted owing to gains that were derived indirectly. They, too, share in some of the blame. 

But resisting temptation is what good character is about.

Notes on Liberty
The Deleted Clause of the Declaration of Independence

Kevin Kallmes

h/t Alex Tabarrok, Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and a research fellow with the Mercatus Center, at Marginal Revolution