Answer:
He incorporated natural rights theory into documents like the Declaration of Independence that not only justified the Revolution but served as “an expression of the American mind.” Natural rights, such as the right to be free and pursue one’s own “happiness,” are rights all human beings possess that are not granted by government and cannot be revoked or repealed.
Explanation:
African Americans, both slave and free, immediately jumped into the fray when white colonists began to protest British colonial rule for the first time in 1765 in response to the Stamp Act, which imposed a tax on newspapers, pamphlets, and legal documents.
African Americans, and some whites opposed to slavery, also recognized the curious irony of statements made by some white colonists that characterized British policies as a conspiracy that threatened to turn free white people into “slaves,” that is, people lacking the same rights and liberties as British citizens overseas.
While a small number of slaves petitioned courts for their freedom, the number of petitions rose during the American Revolution. In the petition it was argued that slavery left black people in bondage for life without the hope of acquiring property and freedom for themselves or their progeny. Since the law deprived slaves of property and instead made them into property, their condition resembled that of an animal and not a human being
Black Americans continued to petition for their freedom during the Revolutionary War, which broke out in 1777 in Massachusetts, former slave Hall, declared that the ideals Americans fought for “in the course of their unhappy difficulties with Great Britain pleads stronger than a thousand arguments…that black people may be restored to the enjoyments of that which is the natural right of all men.”
Two years earlier, Hall founded the first African American branch of Freemasonry and started the first black Masonic Lodge in Boston.
