While the Revolution alleged to reconstruct a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" (Zinn, Chapter 5), the scope of the stated "people" in the sentence would not have included all people living in America of all races, ethnics, genders, as it only focus on the already privileged and wealthy. Abraham Lincoln had to point that out when he strived for the emancipation of the black slaves in his later writings, as well as circling out the inconsistencies that lied under the words of the Declaration of Independence, and the actions that followed it. This leads one to examine the intentions of the Founding Fathers who were responsible for writing such an important document in history. .
Thomas Jefferson, as one of the founding fathers who was also one of the main creator of the Declaration of Independence, intended to encapsulate "an expression of the American mind" (class notes) in that famous document. The statement that, "all men are created equal" (class notes), entails that everybody who is born to this world, insofar as he or she is identifies as one of the members of the United States, is to be treated with equal consideration regardless of the person's origin, race, gender, intelligence, etc. However, by the time the Declaration of Independence was published and ratified- on July 4th, 1776, though America was eager to show its difference from the hierarchical colonists that is the white Europeans, there remained inequalities in the country. The concept of this country with an ideology of equal rights- that every person is entitled to his or her own pursuit of happiness (class notes)- is essential to a democratic system. It also includes the right to elect government officials of the people's will, which was clearly not the case for every member of the american society at that time. The Declaration of Independence (henceforth DOI) entails racial equality.