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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
to the nature of man in organized society, not because it sprang from an
anarchical and mythical state of nature.
The provision of the Declaration of Independence that has aroused the
greatest controversy is Jefferson’s statement ‘‘that all men are created
equal.’’ This was a poor choice of words, for it is obvious that the phrase
does not mean what it says. Neither Jefferson nor any other member of
the Continental Congress seriously believed that all people are equal. ‘‘In
what are they created equal?’’ inquired a critical Englishman who read
the Declaration. ‘‘Is it in size, strength, understanding, figure, moral or
civil accomplishments, or situation of life?’’ The Americans, he asserted,
‘‘have introduced their self-evident truth, either through ignorance, or by
design, with a self-evident falsehood, since I will defy any American
rebel, or any of their patriotic retainers here in England, to point out to
me any two men throughout the whole world of whom it may with truth
b