was deleted.
Apparently, Southern delegates feared that this condemnation of the
monarch reflected on them as well.

Although neither slavery nor the slave trade was mentioned in the
Declaration, it did maintain that all men were created equal and endowed
with the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This
seeming ambivalence concerning the future of slavery on the part of the
Continental Congress left Samuel Johnson's ironic question about American
hypocrisy unanswered. From a logical point of view, the Declaration of
Independence either affirmed the freedom of the African immigrant, or it
denied his humanity. Because each state continued almost as a separate
sovereign entity, the Declaration of Independence became a philosophical
abstraction, and the status of the African in America was determined
independently by each.

Lord Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, put teeth into Johnson's
bitter question. In 1775 he offered to grant freedom to any slave who
ran away from his master and joined the British army. Earlier that year,
in spite of the fact that both slaves and free men had served at
Lexington and Concord, the colonists had shown an increasing reluctance
to have any blacks serving in their Army. The Council of War, under
Washington's leadership, had unanimously rejected the enlistment of
slaves and, by a large majority, it had opposed their recruitment
altogether. However, the eager response of many slaves to Lord Dunmore's
invitation gradually compelled the colonists to reconsider their stand.
Although many colonists felt that the use of slaves was inconsistent with
the principles for which the Army was fighting, all the colonies, with
the exception of Georgia and South Carolina, eventually recruited slaves
as well as freedmen. In most cases, slaves were granted their freedom at
the end of their military service. During the war some five thousand
blacks served in the Continental Army with the vast majority coming from
the North.

In contrast to later practice, during the Revolution the armed services
were largely integrated with only a few segregated units. While the vast
majority of Afro-American troops fighting in the Revolutionary War will
always remain anonymous, there were several who achieved distinction and
made their mark in history. Both Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell
crossed the Delaware with Washington on Christmas Day in 1776. Lemuel
Haynes, later a pastor o