The Chief Justice on the Declaration

There are two stories about the American founding -- one that the USA was to be an egalitarian paradise for all people on Earth, and one that it was White supremacist for the benefit of the WASPs living there.

Chief Justice John Roberts has published his end of year report.

A quarter of a millennium later, the Declaration of Independence stands as one of the most widely read and emulated political documents in history. Its preamble articulates the theory of American government in a single passage that has been hailed as “the greatest sentence ever crafted by human hand.”7

That sentence — likely the principal work of Jefferson, with light edits from Franklin and Adams — proclaims: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”8

It enunciated the American creed, a national mission statement, even though it quite obviously captured an ideal rather than a reality, given that the vast majority of the 56 signers of the Declaration (even Franklin) enslaved other humans at some point in their lives.

No, those signers did not enslave anyone. While many did own slaves, they did not approve of enslaving Africans and shipping them to America.

The Declaration goes on to complain about "merciless Indian savages". It did not intend to make citizens out of Negroes or Indians.

A few years later, the Constitution preamble reads:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It later provides for the banning of the slave trade, but not slavery itself.

Note that there is no mention of being for the benefit of foreigners who might wish to come.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 allowed citizenship for free White Christians of good character, and for children of two citizen parents.