1) Abraham Lincoln making the Declaration about slavery is dishonest. It is deliberately misleading. The declaration was about the very thing he was actively opposing, which was independence for states which wanted it.
2) I have long said that Jefferson's inclusions of those words in the Declaration did more to advance abolition of slavery than any other single act by any other person in history.
You don't see it? You probably never will.
Lincoln didn't "make the Declaration about slavery." He suggested that the principle invoked in the Constitution could be applied to slavery, making that institution morally problematic. Jefferson's words had had an effect on him.
They argued for a principle that people had a right to be independent and to self government. Presumably they believed any government founded on such an idea would respect that same principle when others sought to invoke it.
That's impossible to say, but presumably some of them, if they were still alive almost a century later, would have recognized that the situation of the slave states in 1860 did not resemble the situation of the colonies in 1776 (who were already at war, and didn't start one) and would have counseled compromise and conciliation.
Anyway, you aren't going to be convinced so there's no point in taking this further.
There is no contradiction. The Declaration was *NOT* about slavery. No intent was there by the representatives to make it about slavery. The sole intent was to make it about Independence.
*LATER* people started seeing the words as contradictory to the existence of slavery. After the fact. Subsequent to it.
The viewing of the Declaration as a statement on slavery was a later day phenomena, not associated with 1776 at all.
Lincoln didn't "make the Declaration about slavery." He suggested that the principle invoked in the Constitution could be applied to slavery, making that institution morally problematic.
This is called "burying the lede", if you know what that means. (You emphasize a minor part above that of the major part in terms of importance.)
The Document's true and correct purpose was to justify secession, and Lincoln is trying to make it into an anti-secession event.
It flips the truth topsy turvey to what it really was.
And if you think i'm wrong for noticing this, I will point out that H.L. Mencken noticed the same thing about a 100 years ago.
That's impossible to say,
That's wishful thinking. Lincoln himself believed in exactly the same principle in 1848, and in 1852. He said so. Clearly the dominant mindset from 1776 to 1861 was that states had a right to leave. Even Massachusetts and Connecticut said so at the Hartford convention of 1814.
As someone amusingly pointed out, the Southern states at the time called them "traitors."
Of course as they were talking about going back to the British, this is more traitorous than simply forming your own independent country, so maybe the Southern states had a point.