Yes, those people deserved their freedom and human rights. So lets look at it.
Slavery ended in the following Northern states: NJ. 1804. The last four ‘’slaves’’,actually four indentured servants were free in 1866.
NY- 1827.
NH.- 1783.
Mass.- 1788.
Conn.1784. Slaves comprised about 1% of the total population in Connecticut at the time. PA.- 1780. RI.-1842 Delaware.- 1865. Slavery was ended in the South 12/18/1865 after a war to end it. The ''narrow focus'' is nothing about prevarication but what the subject is being talked about here. You on the other hand keep running off on relativist tangents trying to steer away from the fact that the South choose a war of secession to maintain the use of slave labor.
“Yes, those people (citizens of slave states) deserved their freedom and human rights.”
For the purpose of this discussion, let’s stipulate you are correct: citizens that make up a slave state are not disqualified from invoking their unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
So far, you and I agree.
I will go further - and perhaps here is where you will reject my thinking: That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.