Thomas Jefferson was the chief writer and architect of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence but a committee he worked with changed or deleted many of his ideas to Jefferson's anger.
One crucial item deleted in the original draft condemned the British promotion of the slave trade.
One might think this odd since, first, Jefferson was a slave holder himself and, second, since the colonies included areas where slave holding was very much legal.
With Britain in complete control of the world's seas, Jefferson and others thought that if Britain stopped allowing transportation of slaves, the practice might stop altogether.
The idea was very much on the world's mind. Although countries might have allowed slavery to one degree or another, it was slave transportation that was thought to be entrenching the practice.
In fact, Canada, on July 9, 1793, passed the Act Against Slavery to prevent 'further introduction of slaves and to limit terms contracts for servitude."
In Britain, Christian crusader William Wilberforce by 1787 had formed a committee to stop the slave trade and Parliament in 1807 passed an act to abolish the slave trade (but not slavery itself) within the British Empire and on the Atlantic. Nations throughout the world, including the United States, passed similar legislation during the next 10 years to do the same.
With slave traders thus having the status of pirates on the high seas, anti-slavery crusaders hoped slavery itself would end. In fact, it did not end. In England, the end of slavery required the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 and in America, a civil war in 1861.
Sources: Heritage.org; drafts of the U.S. Declaration of Independence; Amazing Grace by William Wilberforce; and wikipedia.org
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