The command not to kidnap or enslave confers a right to liberty (Exodus 21:16; Deuteronomy 24:7). The 3/5’s clause in the U.S. Constitution was meant to insure the eventual abolition of slavery in America. As much as we don’t want to admit it, slavery throughout the world was the norm, not the exception until Jefferson penned the Declaration. Most of us are not aware that William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, created local legislation outlawing slavery well before the writing of the Declaration. Several other “countries” (future states) followed. Northern and some Southern states began to move towards the abolition of the slave trade and, eventually, slave ownership, long before our Founders dedicated their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. What happened? King George of England struck down those laws. Except for some slave holders in South Carolina and Georgia, the Founders wanted to end slavery. It was the king and parliament that stopped them. (Maybe they should be sent the bill for reparations!) To quote John Eidsmoe from his book, “Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers,”

"The equality of the Declaration, then, consists entirely in the equal entitlement of all to the rights which comprise political liberty, and nothing more. Thus Lincoln wisely interpreted the Declaration: ‘The authors of that noble instrument . . . did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what rights they did consider all men created equal – equal in certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”

“The matter provided an infallible criterion, by which the nation may judge of the intentions of those who govern it. If they endeavor to render the great and the common people virtuous, their views are pure and upright; and you may rest assured that they solely aim at the great end of government, the happiness and glory of the nation. On the other hand, if they corrupted the morals of the common people with permissiveness, thus spreading a ‘taste for luxury, effeminacy, a rage for licentious pleasures . . . beware citizens! Beware of those corruptors! They only aim at purchasing slaves in order to exercise oven them an arbitrary sway.’” (Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution, p. 366).

The “pursuit of happiness,” therefore, was and is always, about pleasing God and building a morally virtuous nation led by morally virtuous people.