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The Declaration was drafted in seventeen days, in lodgings on Market Street in Philadelphia. I borrowed nothing. I intended to say what everyone felt but no one had yet committed to paper: that the authority of governments derives entirely from the consent of those they govern, and that when a government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted, the people have not merely a right but a duty to alter or abolish it.

The Congress struck the passage on slavery. I never forgave them for it.