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frican slaves first arrived on American shores in
1619, when a Dutch ship sailed into the harbor of
Jamestown, Virginia, and sold 20 slaves to the colonists.
They were soon put to work in the nearby tobacco fields.
More than a century and a half later, when Thomas
Jefferson sat down in his rented room in Philadelphia to
draft the Declaration of Independence, thousands of
slaves were owned by plantation owners throughout the
South. The planters relied on slaves for cheap labor. In
fact, Jefferson himself owned slaves.
And yet, Jefferson as well as other colonial leaders
had started questioning slavery. Thomas Paine, whose
stirring words demanding freedom from British
tyranny
African slaves are unloaded at the English
colony in Jamestown,Virginia, in 1619. Though
in 1776 the Declaration of Independence
stated that all men are equal, slavery
continued in the United States until 1865. In
fact, many of the Founding Fathers, including
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration
of Independence, were slaveholders.
5
“All Men Are
Created Equal”
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