Read the following excerpt from the draft of the Declaration of Independence:
[H]e has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the
persons of distant people, who never offended him,
captivating & carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium
of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of
Great Britain. [determined to keep open a market where
MEN should be bought & sold] he has prostituted his
negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to
prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that
this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of
distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to
rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of
which he has deprived them by murdering the people upon
whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former
crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with
crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of
another.
Why might the Continental Congress have revised this passage from the draft of the
declaration?
A. This passage takes the declaration into a different topic, so revising it keeps
the document on point.
B. This passage states a falsehood that couldn't be substantiated, so revising it
keeps the document credible.
C. This passage appeals too much to logos, so revising it keeps the tone even
throughout the document.
D. This passage is redundant and repetitive of other similar ideas raised
elsewhere in the document, so revising it makes the document more
concise.