9781422287453

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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. “All Men Are Created Equal”

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

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