![]() ![]() "The Schuyler Sisters" is a song from the Broadway musical Hamilton performed by Renée Elise Goldsberry (Angelica), Phillipa Soo (Eliza), Leslie Odom Jr. This is not something Congress can fix by passing a law.Hamilton the Musical - The Schuyler Sisters Lyrics ![]() ![]() The government should by all means promote legal equality - as it has - but its responsibility should extend "no further than the removal of legal barriers to equality." (Patterson 153) De facto equality will be a reality when people cease to be prejudicial. Furthermore, the US government is already promoting de facto equality with the graduated tax code, economic welfare and entitlement programs, affirmative action, et cetera. In this way, our elected and appointed officials have promoted legal equality by passing anti-discrimination laws and by declaring segregation unconstitutional. In fact, "Americans have attained substantial equality under the law" legal discrimination is now almost nonexistent (Patterson 132). (Patterson 132) In the past sixty years it has moved to eradicate racial and sexual discrimination. The United States government's intervention has helped to establish legal equality, but not necessarily de facto equality. To discover where they came from it is necessary to move back behind the dim mist of eternity, for they are God-given." (Noyes "Historical Speeches") Exclaimed King in 1961: " says that each individual has certain basic rights, which are neither conferred by nor derived from the state. Our Bill of Rights can be more accurately thought of as a list of restrictions (placed on government) that secures a citizen's civil liberties. Even though Thomas Jefferson owned slaves to his death, I believe this is what Jefferson meant when he said "all men are created equal" - that Americans are entitled to equal justice under the law (Patterson 10).Įquality is not something that a government can grant or deny a body of citizens for this right is unalienable. The written law does not look at one's race but at the crime committed the sentencing should not be dependent on the race of the convict. De facto equality, on the other hand, is, as Martin Luther King, Jr. On the one hand, most Americans' notion of legal equality makes no such distinctions. On August 24, 1855, Abraham Lincoln ended a letter to his close friend Joshua Speed with these words: I am not a Know-Nothing. ![]() Jefferson's restrictive definition, that "people are of equal moral worth, and as such deserve equal treatment under the law", made distinctions for free men vs. This is not limited to strictly financial support. (Patterson 132)Įquality is hard to define because its meaning keeps changing. If we truly want everyone to have an equal chance at success in life, then we need to extend a helping hand to those who need it right now. Questioned Frederick Douglass in his Rochester speech: "Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?" (Lowance 41) Fortunately for Douglass (and all races and both sexes), the United States has moved to achieve full legal equality. For Jefferson and many of our Founding Fathers, the phrase "…that all men are created equal…" really meant that "all free, property-owning males are created equal". Jefferson's words certainly had no reference to black people, of whom the majority at that time had no place in American society except as property.įor Americans, equality is a word that has been expanded in its definition since the founding of the country. The Declaration of Independence, which contains the oft-repeated phrase "…that all men are created equal…" was written by Thomas Jefferson, who owned about 200 slaves at the time and never set any of them free, even upon his death. The meaning of Thomas Jefferson's phrase “all men are created equal” opening lines, which say that 'all men are created equal,' that they have 'certain unalienable rights,' among which are 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' and that 'to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. ![]()
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