Yes. It's associated with American Independence. What I have *NEVER* heard is that the "Spirit of 76" has anything to do with slavery.
People hadn’t heard phrases like “all Men are created equal ... endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, ... among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Well I agree with this, but that inspiration did not manifest into action until *AFTER* 1776, at least not for most of the people in the states. I think there were some that gave up their slaves shortly after the Declaration was issued, but the vast majority did not.
When they did, they were inspired to act upon that ideal.
Yes they were, and I have long said that Thomas Jefferson should be credited with planting the seed that led to the abolition of slavery. He had the most profound impact on the issue of anyone in history.
Nobody is saying that the founders freed the slaves with the Declaration or that they intended to do so at the time. Rather, the Delaration set a standard that they tried to live up to later.
There's the operative word. "Later."
This illustrates my point. Lincoln was referring to 1776, and he was doing so in the context of freeing the slaves. Nobody was trying to do that in 1776. They were trying to gain their independence from the British Union.
To try to make a document totally devoted to the right of people to have independence from their existing government, into a document glorifying the government forces for stopping independence, is dishonest. It's flim flamery.
We’re talking about the inspiration that people got from the document.
Yes, they were inspired LATER. They took action later.
In 1776 they simply wanted out of the Union.
Massachusetts didn't even abolish slavery until *AFTER* 1780. So at least four years LATER.
“1776 people” for the most part, were the same as 1780 or 1787 people. What they thought in 1776 inspired what they did later.
The men who signed the Declaration of Indpendence were thinking of their own freedom, but they recognized that the Declaration asserted general principles that could be applied in other cases. The Declaration made assertions that weren’t confined to the rights of Englishmen or White English-speaking colonists. The Declaration set no limits or restrictions on its principles.
And yet perhaps there were limits and restrictions. The Founders, 1776 people, weren’t keen on attempts to break up the republic they established. Jefferson, very much a 1776 person, didn’t think much of attempts by Aaron Burr to break off part of the country for Burr’s own rule.