Season 3, Episode 7 | The Declaration and Slavery: The Question 1776 Could Not Settle

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson originally wrote a fierce condemnation of slavery into the Declaration of Independence, only for Congress to remove it before signing the final document? And did you know that in 1776, no one was certain whether slavery in America would fade away, transform, or expand?

In this episode of This Constitution, Savannah Eccles Johnston and Dr. Nicholas Cole, Pembroke College, University of Oxford, explore the complicated world of slavery at the time the Declaration was written. Together, they walk through why Jefferson’s anti-slavery passage was removed, how Americans understood slavery in 1776, and why the institution stood on a very uncertain foundation during the revolutionary period.

Dr. Cole explains how the Atlantic world, English legal rulings, gradual emancipation proposals, and the widespread reading of Montesquieu shaped early American thinking. The conversation also explores the financial barriers to ending slavery, the moral and religious arguments circulating in the colonies, and the troubling realities within slaveholder families, including Jefferson’s own. They then discuss figures like George Washington and John Adams and how their attitudes toward slavery reveal a more complex political and moral landscape than many assume.

This episode shows how the Declaration of Independence emerged from a moment filled with unresolved questions, intense debate, and moral tension. It challenges the idea that the founders were blind to the contradictions of slavery and highlights how close the nation may have been to choosing a very different path.

In This Episode

• (00:00) Introduction and episode setup
• (01:17) Jefferson’s stricken slavery passage
• (01:28) Physicality and emphasis in Jefferson’s draft
• (04:29) Context and debates on slavery in 1776
• (06:00) Legal and social shifts against slavery
• (09:20) Gradual emancipation and economic obstacles
• (12:53) Humanity vs. property: enslaved persons as ‘men.’
• (14:29) Changing racial attitudes and moral regression
• (15:38) Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and family complexities
• (17:47) Christian and moral arguments against slavery
• (19:09) Philosophical and legal arguments on slavery
• (21:10) Montesquieu, republicanism, and slavery’s contradiction
• (22:08) George Washington, Adams, and founders’ approaches
• (25:13) Slavery and the founding compromises

Notable Quotes

• (06:01) “Montesquieu said you can't really have a republic and slavery, and that the arguments in favor of slavery are illegitimate.” - Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (11:08) “But I think there is this real problem that so much money has been loaned in order to allow people to own slaves. And so that makes ending it very difficult.” - Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (13:14) “Jefferson knew his property consisted of men. He understood the moral weight of that contradiction.” - Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (23:41) “Washington does things as a slave owner that we would find utterly abhorrent, including rotating slaves from his household when he's president and in a state that doesn't recognize slavery.” - Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (24:37) “Maybe it's better to speak more about Washington and certainly Adams and less about Jefferson as kind of core founding fathers. Hopefully, we're more Washingtonian and more like Adams, the American political project, than Jefferson.” - Savannah Eccles Johnston
• (25:20) “If anybody had tried to use the convention to settle the question of slavery, there would have been no union. That is absolutely clear."- Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (26:19) “1776 is murky on the question of slavery, and this actually helps us understand the moment and the document and what it represents and what it led to understand that everything was kind of up in the air.”- Savannah Eccles Johnston