An early draft of the Declaration of Independence referred to the people of Britain’s 13 North American colonies as “subjects”, the US Library of Congress has revealed. But, in the words of the Washington Post, in 1776 Thomas Jefferson “sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it”. At Jefferson’s hand “subjects” became “citizens”. According to the newspaper “many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated”.
There had been much speculation about what might be behind the smudge on the draft. Spectral imaging technology has revealed the truth.
The sentence in which the deletion was made did not appear in the final version of the Declaration. And neither did the word “subjects”. The new Americans were “citizens”.
For around 200 years after Jefferson made his deletion the British state continued to insult its citizens by calling them “subjects” of the Windsor family.