Why the fuss?

Why all the fuss about the discovery that Jefferson scratched out the word "subject" and replaced it with the word "citizen" in the Declaration of Independence? I mean, they are looking at a "first draft"... and isn't the purpose of a first draft to find errors and correct them prior to publication? There are more than 1700 articles on the topic in my search engine this morning, and I'd like to know why.

Does no one realize that "subject" had a very different meaning back then? By the 1770s, there were no more "serfs" and the feudal system had all but disappeared from the English landscape. Thus, if you were a subject of the Crown, you were a citizen, and could vote accordingly (as long as you weren't a criminal, indebted, indentured, or in the British military, that is). To be a subject of the Crown was a thing of pride for many, even here in the Colonies... and perhaps it is this connotation that Jefferson had in mind when he first penned the word into the Declaration.

More modern day revisionists looking to repaint the manner in which history views both the document that is the Declaration, and the man who authored it... that's my thought, anyway.