The Declaration of Independence is widely revered for its inspiring rhetoric, declaring “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.”^[1]

Its words helped galvanize colonists to fight for independence against the British. Thousands of soldiers joined the cause, many of whom were African Americans. For those African American soldiers, there was a sharp irony in their battle for the freedom of a nation that would not grant them their own.^[2]

These most famous words of the Declaration, when published, were not understood – legally or politically – to extend such freedom and equality to slaves. In fact, it was expressly edited to exclude any suggestion that African Americans should be free.

An earlier draft of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson included a passage condemning slavery as one of the many evils committed by the British crown. Amongst the powerful language, he wrote that the King “has waged war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.”

Somewhere between the drafting of that section and the final publication of the document, these words were deliberately removed.^[3] Nevertheless, African Americans served throughout the Revolutionary War in militias, the Continental Army, and naval forces. They fought in key moments of the Revolution, from Lexington and Concord to Bunker Hill, where soldiers like Peter Salem and Salem Poor distinguished themselves in combat, despite being excluded from the rights the war sought to secure.^[4]

Three-Fifths of a Person

When the nation finally obtained its independence and ratified the Constitution, they were counted as three-fifths of a person and continued to be enslaved. Adding to the tragic irony, their slaveowners were sometimes the very founders, like Jefferson himself, who had so eloquently and powerfully written about the importance, inalienability and basic human entitlement of freedom but did not always embody them in practice.^[5]

While the African Americans were often, quite literally, written out of the same freedoms and value given to others in these founding documents, they transformed those same principles into a basis for challenging their exclusion.   

During and after the Revolutionary War, enslaved people used the words in the Declaration of Independence and the new state constitutions to fight back against their oppression. In 1776, as the ink on the Declaration of Independence had barely dried, Lemuel Haynes gave a sermon in which he wrestled with the incompatibility of American independence and the institution of slavery. Alluding to the language of the Declaration, he argued that liberty and freedom are innate principles that are “unmovably placed in the human species” and that even an African “has equally as good a right to his liberty in common with Englishmen.”^[6] By applying the Declaration’s own logic, Haynes exposed the inconsistency between its universal claims and its exclusionary application.

In 1777, when a group of Black Bostonians petitioned the new Massachusetts legislature to enact statewide emancipation, they grounded their claim to emancipation in the same natural rights principles articulated in the Declaration. Specifically, the petitioners pointed to the state’s constitution, which had similar wording to the Declaration of Independence, arguing that enslaved people had “in common with all other Men, a natural and unalienable right to that freedom, which the great Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally on all Mankind.”^[7]

Similarly, Bet, an enslaved woman in Massachusetts in 1780, overheard her owner discussing the Massachusetts constitution, which echoed the words of the Declaration of Independence, and hired a lawyer to represent her in court. By 1781, Bet and another enslaved man named Brom won their right to be free. They were soon followed by other enslaved people who also won their freedom in court until eventually, the state court established that slavery was not compatible with the Massachusetts constitution and slavery was effectively abolished in Massachusetts in 1783.^[8] Other states also passed abolition laws around the same time, including Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Inspiring Abolitionists

Even as the war was officially coming to an end in 1783, the ideas within the Declaration continued to inspire abolitionists, who used them to fuel their arguments against the injustices being committed towards enslaved people. In 1791, Free Baltimorean Benjamin Banneker wrote to Thomas Jefferson himself. Invoking Jefferson’s power to move people towards fighting for freedom, Banneker wrote, “I hope you cannot but acknowledge, that it is the indispensable duty of those, who maintain for themselves the rights of human nature to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race, from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under.”^[9]

Yet despite these early and persistent appeals to the nation’s founding principles, the institution of slavery endured, with the Thirteenth Amendment not ratified until December 1865 — 82 years after the end of the war.^[10]

Even then, the gap between principle and practice persisted through segregation laws and racial profiling. Nearly a century later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood before Lincoln’s monument and likened the Declaration to a “promissory note” that had yet to be fulfilled. His words reflected the same tension between principle and practice that had existed since the founding and helped drive the passage of civil rights legislation in the twentieth century.^[11] In this way, the nation began to confront and revise its earlier exclusions.

Focusing only on the four corners of the Declaration of Independence makes it easy to ignore the more uncomfortable truths that defined the era and the injustices that followed in the aftermath. But these contradictions are not incidental; they are central to the document’s historical significance.

From its inception, its promise of equality coexisted with systems of exclusion that denied those rights to many, including the very people who helped secure the nation’s independence. Yet it was precisely this gap between principle and practice that gave the document its enduring power. By articulating a universal standard of equality, the Declaration created a framework that later generations—particularly African Americans—could invoke to challenge their exclusion and demand inclusion.

Its legacy, therefore, is not defined by its original limitations, but by its capacity to be reclaimed, contested, and expanded, ensuring that the pursuit of equality in the United States remains an ongoing project – requiring each generation to confront what those principles demand in practice.

The ideas within the founding documents also inspired abolitionists, who used them to fuel their arguments against the injustices being committed towards enslaved people. In 1841, in a powerful case before the U.S. Supreme Court, abolitionists filed suit on behalf of Africans aboard a ship called La Amistad, which was headed to Cuba. When the captives aboard it, who were free Africans who had been kidnapped, rebelled, the crew sailed the ship to New York where the slaves were taken into custody. John Quincy Adams was hired by the abolitionists and during his seven-hour argument, he famously pointed to a copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging on the courtroom wall and said “[I know] no law, statute or constitution, no code, no treaty, except that law . . . which [is] forever before the eyes of your Honors.” Adams elevated the Declaration above statutory law, framing it as a statement of universal human rights that the Court could not ignore. His argument persuaded the Court to rule in favor of returning the Africans to their native country.

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Editor’s note: The author is an associate in the New York office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.

[1] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/declaration-of-independence.

[2] https://www.amrevmuseum.org/black-founders-big-idea-2-black-soldiers-and-sailors-in-the-revolutionary-war.

[3] https://www.history.com/articles/declaration-of-independence-deleted-anti-slavery-clause-jefferson.

[4] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/african-americans-revolutionary-war#:~:text=The%20US%20Marine%20Corps,%20in,10%20percent%20of%20the%20ranks.

[5] https://www.monticello.org/slavery/slavery-faqs.

[6] https://constitutioncenter.org/declaration/primary-sources/liberty-further-extended-or-free-thoughts-on-the-illegality-of-slave-keeping.

[7] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/self-evident-truths-black-americans-and-declaration-independence.

[8] https://www.amrevmuseum.org/black-founders-big-idea-3-african-american-freedom-and-community-1780-1813.

[9] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/self-evident-truths-black-americans-and-declaration-independence#:~:text=Whether%20they%20claim%20United%20States,the%20power%20to%20effect%20change.

[10] https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/organizations/AB39283.

[11] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act.