The first draft of the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson contained a 168 word section lambasting King George III for slavery in the colonies. Here it is:
“ He [King George III] has waged cruel 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 and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither, this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & Murdering the people pon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. (Library of Congress)
This didn’t even make it to the whole Continental Congress, only to a select committee. Jefferson said north and south representatives voted to remove it. Apparently, the only states willing to accept it were the Mid-Atlantic States!
Some people jump to the conclusion that it was removed because those states participated in the shipping and sale (north) or use of slaves (south, mostly). They give no support to their opinion. It could also be because the representatives, still hoping for a peaceful separation, felt Jefferson’s language too extreme.
By the way, notice Jefferson’s use of the word “men.” This answers the question of what “men” means in “all men are created equal.”