![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() That’s part of our story in history, too. We don’t get the part of the story which was about how abolitionism was developing already, even in the 18th century. When we focus on Jefferson, we get one part of America’s story - the story of the slaveholding South. It was the basis of a text that was submitted in Massachusetts in January 1777 moving forward abolition, and abolition had been achieved already in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania by the early 1770s and 1780s. The Declaration of Independence fed straight into abolitionist movements and efforts. Both Adams and Franklin were in a different place on enslavement than Jefferson was. ![]() That’s an important thing to say out loud because Adams is someone who never owned slaves and Franklin was somebody who was an enslaver earlier in his life but repudiated enslavement and became a vocal advocate of abolition. On John Adams and Benjamin Franklin as authors of the Declaration: The political theorist Danielle Allen has written powerfully about the Declaration of Independence, and I’d like just to offer some quotations from her recent conversation with Ezra Klein for my blog on this holiday weekend. I’ve gotten in the habit of quoting from Frederick Douglass’s magnificent July 4th Speech, but this year I want to turn to a more contemporary source of inspiration. ![]()
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