How many of you knew that Thomas Jefferson included the King of England's promotion of slavery as one of the reasons for independence? Jefferson specifically critized the King for "violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people [Africans] Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold?
he [the King of England] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people [Africans] who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium [harsh criticism] of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted [shamefully traded away] his negative [veto] for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable [wretched, detestable] commerce [in human beings]…
