Thomas Jefferson Research Paper

In order to form a more perfect union, the people of the United States must recognize the contrasting nature of slavery, and the founding ideals of the United States. The history of slavery, as with all subjects of history, is long and complicated. If some hapless historian were to attempt to detail the entirety of slavery from its first beginnings to its most modern forms, his work would surely never be done. Unfortunately, from the biblical and ancient Grecian years of involuntary servitude, to the russian and medieval periods of serfdom, and all the way to the human trafficking problems that still occur in first world countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, slavery has been a constant plague upon the world. However,

For this reason, perhaps it would be best to start with the writer of the Declaration of the United States himself, Thomas Jefferson. No founding father has had nearly a complicated relationship with slavery than that of Thomas Jefferson, a man who wrote on the topic of freedom while at the same time maintaining a large plantation of slaves. A very interesting dichotomy, one which Jefferson would attempt to reconcile while drafting the Declaration. There he claims that George III “waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the person of a distant people who never offended him” (deleted passage from the Declaration of Independence) by allowing slavery to exist within itself and its

In many cases “the British promised freedom to slaves, as well as indentured servants, who would bear arms for the Loyalist cause” (The American Revolution, pg 172), as opposed to the patriots reluctance to even allow colored men to join in the battle (pg 173). An interesting contrast that the patriots would fight with a rally cry of “give me liberty, or give me death” and yet, would deny able bodied men the right to fight alongside them in defense of said liberty. This strange paradox only worsens, due to the very blunt fact that the british attempt to free American slaves actually led to an increase in southern state participation against the English. “For many whites, especially in Virginia, the Revolution became primarily a war to defend slavery” (pg 173), rather than the long list of injustices claimed in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson. No, it was the prospect of losing their economic goat, that led the people of the very same state that Thomas Jefferson came from, to finally join the