The Declaration Of Independence All Men Are Created Equal Essay

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The Declaration of Independence: All (White Men) are Created Equal
For centuries, Americans have been using the Declaration of Independence as a tool to combat prejudices everywhere. Many believe that the most significant line in the Declaration is “all men are created equal,” but were all men really meant to be equal when the Declaration was written? The Founding Fathers did not truly want all men to be “created equal” due to the prejudice towards women, enslaved African Americans, and Native Americans after the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Native Americans have been negatively affected by settlers since they “discovered” America in the first place, and they were especially hurt by the Revolutionary War. For starters, the Revolutionary War tore apart the Iroquois Confederacy, one of the most important Native alliances in history. The Confederacy refused to take part in the conflict as a whole but most of the tribes involved decided to join the
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Shortly after the creation of the Declaration and individual state constitutions, women’s legal rights hardly changed, and roles of feme sole and feme covert were still in effect. Women were still seen as the inferior sex and were socially pressured to marry and assimilate to their husbands. However, women in certain areas of America found loopholes in voting laws. For a brief period of time, property-owning white women were able to vote in certain states (such as New Jersey.) Eventually, men in power found out about these loopholes and started explicitly stating that women could not vote, successfully robbing women of their right to a voice in government (which was stated as a legal right in the Declaration.) Through these oppressive actions, it is evident that “all men are created equal,” but only