On July 4, 1776, a now-illustrious, carefully edited, document entitled the "Declaration of Independence" was symbolically released by the Continental Congress of what soon would become known as the United States of America, our nation. That document (now misattributed to the authorship of Thomas Jefferson, instead of to Thomas Paine) dared to declare our political separation from the "Mother Country" of its thirteen former British colonies, bound by its "inalienable" rationale in North America's democratic republican form of government now extant.
Declaration did not make it so by fiat. Independence required war! So, for eighth years , 1776-1783, war raged between "mother" and daughter for sovereignty over the new land. Thereafter they fought again in 1812-1814, before finally determining that desired political dissolution was then a geopolitical fact, certainty. English was their common tongue and the common law of England was their rubric. The religion of each nation was Protestant. Both nations were slaveholding, America in the South, primarily, and England overseas.
Slavery of Africans was the motive labor force of the "New World," and was the source of discord between the two countries. The "Somerset Case" of 1772, had declared that the air of Great Britain was too pure to abide slavery within its borders. And therefore, the slave, James Somerset who had sued for his freedom aided by abolitionists had Southern slaveholders doing summersaults! If the African slave was inviolably free in England, how long before Judge Mansfield's decision was extended to them?
Not the Stamp Act, nor any tax of England, was so unsettling to the colonial economy as the "attack" to its economy by this slave's case.
The James Somerset decision of 1772 surely factored into the now-controversial editing of the original version of the "Declaration of Independence" by the special committee of the Continental Congress. Thomas Jefferson sat on that small committee. He was a notable slaveholder, who would have been loathe to condemn himself in that defining national document that condemned King George III's colonial importation, and subjugation of unoffending Africans to American thralldom. The later official version edited out references to Africans and Indians.
As we celebrate the 4th of July today and hereafter, it will surely be helpful to know its historical antecedents and to be cognizant of its yet-enduring historical edits, we fellow Africans and Indians who yet strive for recognition as American citizens, over 250 years later!
Amen 🙏
