Question

Which statement was in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence but not the final version?

Answer 1

Answer:  A statement against the evil of the slave trade.

Details:

In his original draft of the Declaration, Jefferson condemned the slave trade carried on by the British.  (Yes, Jefferson himself owned slaves he had inherited, but saw an eventual emancipation of slaves as something that would need to be done over time.)  The paragraph in the draft of the Declaration said that the King of England "has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty" by capturing, transporting and selling human beings from the distant land of Africa.  He called the "market where men should be bought and sold" an "execrable commerce" carried on by authority of the British crown.  ("Execrable" is an adjective related to excrement -- something extremely nasty.)  

Georgia and South Carolina would not join in voting for independence from Britain unless the paragraph about the evil of the slave trade was omitted, and so it was omitted from the final version.

Answer 2

That would be the statement about slavery.

In the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote a lengthy part about the evils of slavery.  In the paragraph that was later left out Jefferson is actually blaming the king for the issue of slavery. We see here that it is seen that slavery is the sin committed by Britain. The exclusion of this paragraph tells us that slavery was an issue even when the United States were deciding to fight for their independence.