Umm, you are aware, I assume, of the glaring problem in holding this belief and defending the CSA at the same time?
There are, of course, only two ways around it.
Either you (and the CSA) don't really mean it. ALL men don't have this right.
Or you decide that some humans aren't "really" men. Some in the CSA took one route, some the other.
Route A means you essentially have to throw the Declaration of Independence overboard, as Calhoun, Stephens and others did. All men "aren't" created equal and the Founders were just wrong.
I believe others in the South went down Route B and decided Africans weren't really human, so the Declaration didn't apply to them.
Which POV do you agree with?
BTW, I don't mean to insult the South unnecessarily here. That blacks weren't human or fully human was the general wisdom in the North too, and indeed throughout the world.
Not many people today realize that at the time it was what was taught as science. To reject it meant tossing overboard was taught both by the Church, for the most part, and by Science. Most of those who did so reached this POV for Christian reasons.
There are, of course, only two ways around it.
Either you (and the CSA) don't really mean it. ALL men don't have this right.
It was the founders that didn't really mean it. They were the ones that espoused this principle, and they were also the ones that built the system to accommodate slavery as well as kept slaves themselves.
You keep trying to make *ME* the target, but your target is the founders who built this deliberate dichotomy into the system.
Naturally I believe these principles ought to apply to everyone, but the North wasn't going to war to defend these principles, they were going to war to oppose these principles.
Or you decide that some humans aren't "really" men. Some in the CSA took one route, some the other.
And here is this backdoor attempt to portray anyone who defends the idea of self determination into a horrible person because the people who did it before kept slaves.
Route A means you essentially have to throw the Declaration of Independence overboard, as Calhoun, Stephens and others did. All men "aren't" created equal and the Founders were just wrong.
You are still trying to blame me for the built in dichotomy. Your attacks (Route A, Route B) need to be directed at the founders where they belong.
Again, it is obvious by their behavior that they never intended for the Declaration to apply to slaves. Every single state was a slave state at the time. Now it is YOU who must make a determination. Either the founders were idiots and too stupid to realize they were freeing all the slaves with that declaration, or that they were choosing deliberately lofty sounding words to make their document sound better, and though they said "all men" they didn't really mean all men, they meant British subjects who lived in the colonies, which doesn't sound quite so grand and noble.
Again, judging by their own behavior, it appears that they let the rhetoric get away from them, and a lot of unintended consequences resulted from their desire to use pretty language.
Certainly Massachusetts immediately applied the principle to slaves. Well, not immediately. It took them four years, but they were faster than the rest.
Which POV do you agree with?
I don't agree with either. If you are familiar with debate, you are aware of the fallacy known as "false choice." You have been trying to push on me a false choice.
As I pointed out, I can believe that the founders never intended to apply the Declaration to slaves (because the evidence supports this) but that they did intend to apply it to the former British Subjects of which the Southern States were also made.
I can also believe that what the Southern States did was consistent with the meaning and principles invoked by the Declaration, and what the Northern states did in forcing them back, was not.
I can further believe that even though the founders didn't intend to apply the Principles in the Declaration to slaves, they ought to have clearly said so instead of obscuring this point by trying to sound all noble in their declaration. It caused much grief that they did not.
I can further believe that these principles ought to have been applied to slaves, and that slavery never should have existed in the first place, but it is patently clear that the declaration did not, nor was it intended to abolish slavery.
The difference between conservative and liberal judicial thinking is whether or not you are going to apply the law as it was actually intended, or whether you are going to twist a new and unintended meaning out of the law to suit your own personal preference.
Conservatives interpret the law as it was meant to be applied when it was written. Liberals twist it to suit the latest fad. When Massachusetts cited the Declaration to abolish slavery, they were deliberately distorting it's original intent, which was to free colonists, not slaves.
Conservatives do not have to agree with a law to interpret it correctly. With liberals, if they don't agree with a law, they simply will ignore original intent.