premise: New Englanders were a bit sensitive on the subject of their complicity in Negro slavery at the time of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence , as Jefferson explained in his `` Autobiography '' : `` The clause reprobating the enslaving the <mask> of Africa was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia , who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves , and who on the contrary still wished to continue it .
hypothesis: the proper context for <mask> here should be a person who inhabits a particular place