Declaration of Independence

Today in class we watched a video and stopped throughout it to talk about certain lines in the Declaration of Independence. One thing that stuck out to me is that written in the DOI it states " all men are created equal" however at the time slavery still existed. Also women didn't have any rights at the time. Jefferson wrote that if a government does not protect the rights of citizens, people have the right to form a new government. This idea was not new. Jefferson used ideas that John Locke and other English thinkers had written about. Jefferson listed many ways that Britain had not served the colonists. He wrote, for example, that King George had tried to take away rights and force taxes on the colonies. Jefferson showed that the colonists had a right to separate from the king and have their own government.