Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence

Actor: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent & inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness.” 



Anna Deavere Smith: That’s the famous second sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Or is it? 

Congress spent two days debating and editing Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration before they adopted it on July 4th, 1776. Jefferson wrote out this version shortly afterward to preserve his original text. He underlined places where Congress had made changes—which today serves as a reminder that even the most foundational texts emerge through a process of revision.

Some of Congress’s textual changes altered the Declaration in fundamental ways. Completely left out of the final version, but present here, is a fiery denunciation of the slave trade, which Jefferson calls a “cruel war against human nature itself” and “an assemblage of horrors”—this, despite the fact that Jefferson himself was an enslaver. He owned over 600 human beings throughout his life and granted but few of them liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  

But Jefferson's omitted passage allows us a solemn opportunity: to imagine how history might have been different if, from the beginning, the United States had taken a stand against the evils of enslavement.