On 3/6/2013 10:50 PM, BottleBob wrote:
On Wednesday, March 6, 2013 10:03:43 PM UTC-8, George Plimpton wrote:
On 3/6/2013 4:59 PM, BottleBob wrote:

The Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson reads:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."



Correct.



And yet Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. Owning people whom DIDN'T have Equality, Liberty, or the ability to pursue their happiness. This must have cost ol' TJ any number of sleepless nights due to the cognitive dissonance of it all. LOL



Obviously the "all men" who were created equal didn't include black
Africans. That was an error on the part of the founders.


Blacks as a sub-species... a convenient bit of shared sophistry there.

Not in the least. That was the prevailing sentiment among the founder,
both slave owners and not.


Since the Founders that didn't actually OWN slaves looked the other way when they were assigned UNequal status.

They didn't look the other way. They understood they had to accommodate
slavery in order to obtain a union.


Hmmm, I believe American Indians had an ambiguous status as well. LOL