The Declaration’s Missing 168 Words

In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson included a fiery 168-word passage in his draft of the Declaration of Independence that condemned the slave trade as “piratical warfare” and “execrable commerce.” He accused King George III of waging “cruel war against human nature itself” by allowing Africans to be captured, transported and sold into slavery in the colonies.

It was among the most radical language in Jefferson’s draft.

Congress removed the passage during its final debates and edits in early July. Delegates from South Carolina and Georgia objected to language that challenged the slave trade, which they intended to continue. Some Northern delegates were uncomfortable, too. Jefferson later wrote in his autobiography that they “had been pretty considerable carriers” of enslaved people themselves.

The final Declaration replaced Jefferson’s direct attack with a vaguer complaint that the king had excited “domestic insurrections amongst us.” That phrase reflected white colonists’ fears that enslaved people might rise up during the Revolution, but it avoided Jefferson’s broader moral attack on slavery and the slave trade.

Jefferson was furious. He later wrote that Congress had “mangled” his draft, and the deletion became one of the most revealing edits in the nation’s founding document.

The deeper irony is hard to miss: the man who called slavery an assemblage of horrors enslaved more than 600 people over the course of his life.

In the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration, those missing 168 words remain among the most consequential edits in American history.