That this portion of the Declaration was stricken out by Congress before
its formal presentation to the world does not negative the fact that, in
thus declaring, Mr. Jefferson proclaimed the sentiments of his native
state. It was ominous of her future experience with respect to this
baneful subject, that the voice of Virginia was then silenced in
deference to the states of the far South and certain of their Northern
sisters. Mr. Jefferson has left upon record that this clause in the
Declaration of Independence was stricken out:
"In compliance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted
to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still
wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a
little tender under these censures, for though their people had very
few slaves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to
others."[12]
The biographers of Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, say:
"The objections of South Carolina and Georgia sufficed to cause the
erasure and suppression of the obnoxious paragraph. Nor were the
Northern States guiltless; Newport was yet a great slave mart, and the
commerce of New England drew more advantages from the traffic than did
the agriculture of the South."[13]