The Declaration of Independence\u2019s clause about \u201cmerciless Indian Savages\u201d and its deleted passage on slavery say a lot about us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Jon Schwarz<\/a> July 4 2021 (theintercept.com)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n An illustration by Udo Keppler, \u201cThe Triumph of the American Battle-ship,\u201d depicts the celebration of the Fourth of July in 1898.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Illustration: Universal Images Group via Getty<\/p>\n\n\n\n Happy Birthday, America! Today, July 4, 2021, we turn 245 years old. You might think we\u2019d have trouble blowing out all the candles on the cake, but fortunately we can use the downdraft from the Sikorsky S-97 Raider<\/a>, a new prototype attack helicopter with two rotors that spin in opposite directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now that we\u2019re 245, it seems as though we should be old enough to take an honest look at various dumb and awful things about our birth, and stop believing in preposterous myths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the American Revolution officially began at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts in April 1775, for some time afterward complete separation from Great Britain was only supported by a fervent minority. However, nothing works as well as killing and being killed to make everyone believe the other side are irredeemable monsters. By June 1776, public sentiment favored a total break.Join Our NewsletterOriginal reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.I\u2019m in<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Declaration of Independence<\/a> was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, with edits by several others, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. It is Filled with The kind Of unpredictable Capitalization that was Common before English Was Standardized, and accuses King George III of attempting to impose both \u201cabsolute Despotism\u201d and \u201cabsolute Tyranny\u201d on the 13 Colonies. With the benefit of hindsight, many of the complaints make this seem like the kind of excitable language you employ to justify a decision you\u2019ve already made. For instance, King George \u201ccalled together legislative bodies at places unusual\u201d for \u201cthe sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance.\u201d Bad, maybe, but not the worst crime in human history. This style of wild rhetorical exaggeration survives today among Americans who proclaim that the phaseout of incandescent lightbulbs is exactly like what Hitler did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most interesting parts of the declaration are two complaints, one that made it into the final version and one that did not. The one that did make it in is the final entry on the list of indictments of King George: \u201cHe has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.\u201d This is the kind of thing that makes you wonder whether Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who just condemned<\/a> the idea that the U.S. was \u201cfounded in racism,\u201d has ever read the Declaration of Independence. He may also never have heard of George Washington, who once told a friend<\/a> that Indigenous people in the Americas and wolves were both \u201cbeasts of prey tho\u2019 they differ in shape.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there is the clause about slavery in Jefferson\u2019s original rough draft of the declaration<\/a>. King George, said Jefferson, had \u201cwaged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it\u2019s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither.\u201d This seems like conclusive evidence that white Americans were capable at the time of grasping the concept that slavery was evil. Thus judging those who engaged in it is not \u201cpresentism,\u201d in which we impose today\u2019s moral standards on the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, Jefferson himself owned at least 600 slaves during his life. Presumably he understood they were not working his plantation by choice, just because they wanted him to have more free time for philosophizing. Jefferson squared this circle by also condemning King George for \u201cnow exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he had deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them.\u201d First, King George forced people like Jefferson to enslave human beings, which they never would have done otherwise! And now King George was making these enslaved humans believe it was terrible to be enslaved, something they never would have figured out on their own! This was Tyranny in its purest form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Decades later in 1821, Jefferson wrote<\/a> that the slavery clause had been removed by the full Continental Congress \u201cin complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia. \u2026 Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under these censures, for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.\u201d GOP-controlled state governments that today are cracking down on the teaching<\/a> of history<\/a> might want to bar Jefferson\u2019s first point but emphasize his second to own the libs. New York City, the capital of liberalism, had one of America\u2019s largest slave markets on Wall Street for much of the 18th century and continues to have many streets named after prominent families of the era that enriched themselves in the trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of this means that the U.S. is uniquely dreadful; the foundings of other countries were similarly bloody and hypocritical. But it does mean that when we\u2019re tempted to bloviate about our unique goodness<\/a> that we should probably cool it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And obviously there are some good parts in the Declaration of Independence, ones so universally inspiring that Ho Chi Minh copied them directly when he wrote a Proclamation of Independence for Vietnam in 1945. America was so touched by this that a few years later we considered giving France a few nuclear weapons<\/a> to drop on Vietnam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The declaration today resides at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. It\u2019s barely legible<\/a> but is still worth a visit as an opportunity to be honest with ourselves about what our history\u2019s truly about. It wasn\u2019t created by a race of perfect angels, but by people who were just as sweaty, confused, and occasionally drunk as we are. Just like us, they had grievous faults and intermittent noble aspirations. And if they could change the world, and they definitely did, we can too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jon Schwarz<\/a>jon.schwarz@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a>@Schwarz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Declaration of Independence\u2019s clause about \u201cmerciless Indian Savages\u201d and its deleted passage on slavery say a lot about us. Jon Schwarz July 4 2021 (theintercept.com) An illustration by Udo Keppler, \u201cThe Triumph of the American Battle-ship,\u201d depicts the celebration of the Fourth of July in 1898. Illustration: Universal Images Group via Getty… Continue reading CONTACT THE AUTHOR:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n