Wednesday Dead Racist Blogging: Independence Day Edition

"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."

Well, except for darkies:

I am aware that all the Abolition lecturers that you find traveling about through the country, are in the habit of reading the Declaration of Independence to prove that all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Lincoln is very much in the habit of following in the track of Lovejoy in this particular, by reading that part of the Declaration of Independence to prove that the negro was endowed by the Almighty with the inalienable right of equality with white men. Now, I say to you, my fellow-citizens, that in my opinion, the signers of the Declaration had no reference to the negro whatever, when they declared all men to be created equal. They desired to express by that phrase white men, men of European birth and European descent, and had no reference either to the negro, the savage Indians, the Fejee, the Malay, or any other inferior and degraded race, when they spoke of the equality of men. One great evidence that such was their understanding, is to be found in the fact that at that time every one of the thirteen colonies was a slaveholding colony, every signer of the Declaration represented a slaveholding constituency, and we know that no one of them emancipated his slaves, much less offered citizenship to them when they signed the Declaration; and yet, if they intended to declare that the negro was the equal of the white man, and entitled by divine right to an equality with him, they were bound, as honest men, that day and hour to have put their negroes on an equality with themselves.

--Stephen Douglas, speech at Jonesboro Illinois, September 15, 1858.

[Edit] And another one, just because of the use of the phrase "self-evident lie":

It is alleged that all men are created equal, and the Declaration of Independence is referred to, to sustain that position. However unpopular, or however displeasing it may be to the mass of my fellow-citizens, I am constrained to dissent from any such position or dogma. It is not true in fact; it is not true in law; it is not true physically, mentally, or morally that all men are created equal. ... [H]owever egotistical or absurd it may appear in me to venture to contradict or dispute the language of the Declaration of Independence, I proceed to do it fearlessly. I cannot, in the first place, believe that Mr. Jefferson ever intended to give the meaning or force which is attempted now to be applied to this language when he said: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I hold it to be a self-evident lie.

--Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, p. 214