Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration on Slavery

In his own version of the Declaration of Independence (1776), Thomas Jefferson made references to slaves in the North American colonies of Britain that were struck out in the final version endorsed by Congress. Historians noticing this change have tended to ignore the connections that the Jeffersonian discussion of black slaves in the colonies as a “captive nation” had with English philosopher John Locke’s theory of natural rights. On the other hand, scholarship finding Lockean traces in Jefferson’s natural rights theory have tended to ignore the problem of black chattel slavery in Jefferson’s Declaration. In an attempt to ameliorate such disconnectedness, I hope to show in this paper how Jefferson’s discussion of black slaves and slavery in the document was ultimately rooted in Locke’s understanding freedom and slavery together with the state of war as well as the consequences of such a connection.