Equality in America: Unpacking "All Men Are Created Equal"

The Declaration of Independence's most famous phrase, "All men are created equal," represents a revolutionary claim in human political history that asserts the fundamental equality of all humans regarding certain unalienable rights granted by a divine creator.

• The phrase appears in the first part of the Declaration's second paragraph as the first of several "self-evident truths."
• The claim draws from the natural law tradition dating back to ancient Greek philosophers
• "All men" likely means all human beings regardless of gender, based on textual evidence within the Declaration
• Abraham Lincoln emphasized in his 1857 Dred Scott address that this equality applies to fundamental rights despite human differences
• Jefferson included an anti-slavery paragraph in his original draft that the Continental Congress later removed
• The Declaration established both a philosophical principle of universal human equality and a standard for ongoing progress
• The document balances aspirational universal principles with practical political compromise

If you want to learn more about Lincoln's interpretation of the Declaration, look for his Dred Scott address of 1857; you can find it here.

Jefferson's initial draft of the Declaration.

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