“The Founding Fathers of our nation don’t get the credit they deserve in trying to eliminate slavery here. “
That’s the issue at hand. In the timeline, the Royal Navy did not do what you are referring to until decades later after Independence.
At the time of Independence, the Royal Navy did the opposite of what you claim - or at “best” was indifferent because the king/parliament told them to be.
This:
“The Founding Fathers of our nation don’t get the credit they deserve in trying to eliminate slavery here.”
Which is why the original question was asked.
“Shouldn’t conservatives stop ignoring The British Empire’s role in slavery?”
It’s a VERY fair question lacking any reasonable responses. The 1830s are decades later.
I’ll draw you an analogy. The Czech Republic has been a great place for decades since they threw off the yoke of communism. We still condemn the communism of the prior era.
Virtually all the Founders were dead by the 1830s.
I think we’re in agreement on a basic point. I don’t view slavery as America’s ‘original sin’ that somehow negates all the good our nation has brought to the world.
Our Founders outlawed slavery where they could without destroying the nation in the process. Slavery had been around forever and was the ‘norm’ for the time, but the Founders still looked upon it as morally wrong.
What many overlook is that at the time of the founding (1776 not 1619!) slavery looked to be on its last legs here in America. It just didn’t make economic sense. Then the cotton gin was invented and very quickly someone with lots of slaves could make huge amounts of money in any place where green-seed cotton could be grown. So by the 1830s eliminating slavery in the U.S. was politically impossible.
My point was and is that Great Britain did end slavery in its empire and did actively try to end it around the world and should get some credit for it, in spite of its role earlier.
It’s like the argument that “women didn’t get the right to vote in the U.S. until 1920! What a sexist nation the U.S. was! When the fact is that women got the right to vote here (in most places) far earlier than anywhere else on earth.