It's about the third or fourth time, but that's okay: it's worth repeating.

it's an excellent article, but has sections which digress.
"By 1853, when Sen. John Pettit of Ohio called “all men are created equal” “a self-evident lie,” much of America’s educated class had already absorbed the “scientific” notion (which Darwin only popularized) that man is the product of chance mutation and natural selection of the fittest. Accordingly, by nature, superior men subdue inferior ones as they subdue lower beings or try to improve them as they please. Hence while it pleased the abolitionists to believe in freeing Negroes and improving them, it also pleased them to believe that Southerners had to be punished and reconstructed by force. As the 19th century ended, the educated class’s religious fervor turned to social reform: they were sure that because man is a mere part of evolutionary nature, man could be improved, and that they, the most highly evolved of all, were the improvers."
sigh-another author who doesn't understand Evolution. It is not about individuals but SPECIES and irrelevant to the question of equality in the Declaration of Independence. But I especially enjoyed the first third of the article. Thanks for positing John.