Jefferson understood, wonderfully well, tlie use
of language; and when lie wrote, " all men" he
meant all men^ the human family. He thought
not of Blumenhach's division of this family into
Caucassians, Indians, Ethiopians, Mongolians,
and Malays; or of the fifty other classes into which
other physiologists have endeavored to classify
our race. He did not intend to exclude John
Eandolph from this principle, because the blood
of the Indian circulated in his veins, or Eam-
mohun Eoy, because of his Mongolian descent,
or Alexander Dumas, because his high genius
is inspired by the commingling of Ethiopian
and Caucasian blood. , It was the human family
which was ia his miad's eye when he gave to
the world this noble utterance ; and it is an in-
sult to his memory to suggest, that, when draw-
ing up that magnificent bill of rights, the gospel
of democracy, which no infidel cavils can ever
undermine, his mind was groping about among
the trivialities of artificial classifications of our
race into white men, and red men, and black
men, and yellow men, and tawny men. Jeffer-



DEVELOPMENTS. 99

son said, " all" all men. He meant wHat he
said.
The gentleman making this strange affirma-
tion in Congress, necessarily proposes that the
Declaration of Independence should be amend-
ed to read thus.
