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I fully understand the context, and also fully understand that there were many people at the time of the Civil War (and even, to a much lesser extent, at the time of the Declaration) understood that the Declaration does not say that all Citizens have inalienable rights, but rather that all Men have inalienable enable rights, and therefore that chattel slavery was fundamentally incompatible with the ideals set forth in the Declaration. This is not a revisionist concept.

Again you miss the context, deny it how you will. The Declaration was not a call for a war to free Mankind from anything. It was a specific espousal of the reasons that compelled those in rebellion to take so extreme a step on their own behalf! The language about rights, refers to Man in the natural state. It goes not to the specific grievances--those comprise by far most of the text, and follow the philosophic comments on Man in a natural state, before the actual declaration of independence, at the end.

The document is logically structured as the justification for specific peoples in specific colonies to rise on their own behalf. (See Declaration Of Independence--With Study Guide.) It is so far from being a cry for Abolitionism, that it lists among the grievances, efforts to stir up a servile rebellion. (And if you are familiar with Jefferson's other writings, you will understand why he would not have urged Abolitionism at that point in time.)

I fully understand the context, and also fully understand that there were many people at the time of the Civil War (and even, to a much lesser extent, at the time of the Declaration) understood that the Declaration does not say that all Citizens have inalienable rights, but rather that all Men have inalienable enable rights, and therefore that chattel slavery was fundamentally incompatible with the ideals set forth in the Declaration. This is not a revisionist concept.

This view is incompatible with the facts. Jefferson and Washington both owned slaves. If they intended for the words in the Declaration to apply to slaves, they would have freed their own before or quickly after the creation of the document.

I think Jefferson *wanted* it to be inspirational and apply to all men, but his flowery language does not trump the will and reality of the actual understood meaning.