Well the Founders didn't think so. Despite Jefferson having written "All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights..." he apparently didn't apply this idea to his own slaves, nor did any of the other founders apply it to their slaves, so we must conclude that they didn't mean for it to apply to slaves in general. The Union also did not apply this idea to slaves for "Four Score and Seven Years" either. They only got the notion that this should apply to slaves in January of 1863. For some reason they just seized upon the idea 18 months after the war had started.
But as a moral issue, yes, all people should be free, but it wasn't for a moral reason that the Union invaded the South. At best it was for a pseudo-legal technicality of "preserving the Union". At worst, even this was just a made up excuse.
But the Declaration of Independence does not have any governing authority like the Constitution does.
The Declaration is the mother of the constitution. It lays down the foundational authority under which the Constitution derives it's own legitimacy. The Nation operated with no constitutional charter from 1776 to 1781, and it didn't ratify the actual constitution until 1789.
If the principle upon which the Declaration is based is invalid, then so too is the legitimacy of the US Constitution. This is sort of like that old "time travel" adage of "Killing your Grandfather." If you reject the legitimacy of the Declaration, then you have no legitimacy under the Constitution.
The Constitution does NOT provide any specific condition in which secession is warranted.
And why would it? It was understood by all and sundry in 1787 that the Declaration cites Natural Law as the basis of the Government. The constitution merely lays out a blueprint for what the founders believed would be a relatively well functioning governance. The Founders recognized that the Declaration was based on the laws of God, and the Constitution was based on the laws of Man.
Further, your analogy breaks down because, in order to achieve independence, the colonies DID have to fight a war.
The British Government was founded on the concept of the "Divine Right of Kings." It regarded allegiance as eternal. When the founders declared a right to independence based on the "laws of nature and of nature's God", they adopted a new paradigm. They put forth an explicit recognition of a right to independence for any people that wish it.
It is understandable that a nation should have to fight a war to change an existing standard which doesn't allow independence, but once that standard has been changed, why should it necessitate fighting a war with a nation that recognizes a right to be independent? Why did Lincoln shift the paradigm back to that of King George III, instead of that which the founders adopted "four score and seven years" earlier?
Can I take that as a “yes” as to BLM getting to set up their own private government within areas of the country that are mostly black?
If they so wish. Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan and others have proposed this very thing. It would not bother me if they chose to do this. In fact, such a thing would legitimize that foundational idea which Lincoln destroyed, that people have a right to self determination.
The 13 colonies were fighting for their freedom. The South was fighting to keep freedom from millions of slaves.
Please stop with the histrionics. Both the North and the South regarded slavery as Legal when the war began. For "Four Score and Seven Years", This was the flag of slavery.
They didn't go to war to stop slavery, so the South's position on it was not relevant to why the North invaded. You can't justify the bloodshed by an "after the fact" act of atonement with other people's lives and money.
They had not reached enough support in public opinion to resolve the issue when the nation was founded. But many were against slavery and for emancipation from the start.
The abolitionists of the day were mostly regarded in the manner that liberal kooks are regarded nowadays. Most of the people in the North who were opposed to slavery were not opposed to it on moral grounds so much as they were opposed to it on the basis of labor and wages. Most men of the day had to earn a wage to survive, and the absolute most hateful thing in their mind was someone working for free and putting them out of work.
If you will look at the modern Northern States, you see that they are heavily Unionized, and very much in favor of protectionism and Federal subsidies. Their modern disposition is little different from what it was in 1860. The same attitudes and social dynamics are at work in 2016 Ohio as existed in 1860 Ohio.
Dickens also sums up the conditions prevalent in most Northern States of 1860.
Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens."
Lincoln also had great disdain for blacks, and was one of the executive members of an Illinois organization dedicated to deporting them to other countries. There were laws in Illinois which banned blacks from settling in that state.
Please do not think me so gullible as to believe that people who viciously hated blacks, would fight a war out of concern for their plight. Yes, maybe a few abolitionist kooks, but the vast majority of Northern men did not give one sh*t about blacks being enslaved.
Now you are getting into kooky conspiracy theory territory. Regardless of financial or political reasons for Lincoln or others to support the war and emancipation of slaves, the majority in the north wanted to end slavery.
It is not kooky conspiracy theory because Lincoln made it clear that keeping slavery was an acceptable option to him.
If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
Lincoln was quite clear on the point.
The war was not fought merely to save face for Lincoln.
No, it was initially fought for economic supremacy. After awhile, it was fought simply for revenge, and to assert dominance. Abolishing slavery was both a "revenge" against the South for having fought so hard, and a demonstration of "dominance" to rub their faces in the fact they had been beaten.
But the notion that slavery, as it existed in the US, was acceptable, is an untenable position.
Except that Lincoln explicitly said that was an acceptable outcome. That statement from Lincoln is quite difficult to square with the official narrative, isn't it?
Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late,--all the powers of earth cannot restore to them their slaves any more than their dead grandfathers."
Apparently he saw the issue as negotiable in 1863 if the South would stop fighting.
It fails to address the human rights of the slaves who were not citizens at the time but were humans under the jurisdiction of this nation. They had human rights which were not being protected.
My argument ignores it as a factor, because we have evidence from two powerful Union leaders that it wasn't really a factor in their decisions. For "four score and seven years" it wasn't regarded as a factor.