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Cori Bush Demands Reparations On The 4th Of July, Slams Writers Of Declaration of Independence

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1 year ago

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Representative Cori Bush (D-MO) elected to attack the drafters of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July. She took aim at the writers for being “enslavers” and  for not recognizing  “Black people as human.” She then tweeted that she demanded “Reparations Now” for the sins of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.

Perhaps Representative Bush was unaware that among the drafters of the historic document was John Adams, a man who never owned a slave and looked down on the practice. A previous draft of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson denounced the practice of slavery as wrong and as a cause of grievance between the United States and Great Britain. “He [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself…violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither” wrote Jefferson, a slave holder himself.

This passage was removed over the need for unity between the northern states and southern states. Nevertheless, the final version of the Declaration of Independence reads that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Such this sentiment does not create the basis of equality on race- a fact pointed out by Abraham Lincoln. The principle borne from these words fundamentally recognizes the humanity of all persons.

As pointed out by the Twitter user Photo of John Wayne, “John Adams was against slavery. Roger Sherman was against slavery. Benjamin Franklin was an abolitionist. Thomas Jefferson put anti-slavery language in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence.”

Richard Baris tweeted in response to Bush’s statement that this was a “[d]isgusting tweet for Independence Day, and of course, it’s total nonsense. It was written largely by one man who owned slaves, but opposed the institution and had two anti-slavery founders proofreading his work. They knew exactly what they were doing at the time when they submitted “all men are created equal” and what it meant for the future of slavery in the colonies. Read. A. Book. Better yet, read primary source documents from these men, themselves.”

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Abraham Lincoln himself contended that “the framers of our Constitution [many of whom were signatories of the Declaration of Independence]  placed the institution of slavery where the public mind rested in the hope that it was in course of ultimate extinction.”

There was a reason that the forces that most ardently defended the institution of slavery sought to downplay the revolutionary and radical sentiment expressed in the Declaration of Independence over all men being equal. Senator John C. Calhoun (D-SC) said there was “not a word of truth” in the literal reading of these words in a 1848 speech.

Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, called in 1861 for a new constitution because the old Union rested upon the ” assumption of the equality of races” and that the Confederacy would correct this error. Why if the Declaration of Independence and its framers were so pro-slavery would the friends of the institution of slavery so seek to deny or downplay the very words of the declaration itself?

 

 



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