[x]

There was little thought that it should apply to slaves at the time it was written, (except for Jefferson of course)

Jefferson did write the Declaration. There must have been a reason he made a philosophical, rather than a merely legalistic argument. He was making a generalization about mankind -- man as man, man in the state of nature -- and leaving it for us to decide how to apply it. John Adams worked similar language into the Massachusetts Constitution, and Massachusetts courts interpreted it as making slavery invalid. Others didn't go that far, but there was something of a consensus in the founding generation that slavery was incompatible with Republican values. They weren't ready to get rid of it, but they thought a future generation would. That changed as the money started rolling in from cotton.

[DiogenesLamp]

Jefferson did write the Declaration. There must have been a reason he made a philosophical, rather than a merely legalistic argument. He was making a generalization about mankind -- man as man, man in the state of nature -- and leaving it for us to decide how to apply it. John Adams worked similar language into the Massachusetts Constitution, and Massachusetts courts interpreted it as making slavery invalid. Others didn't go that far, but there was something of a consensus in the founding generation that slavery was incompatible with Republican values. They weren't ready to get rid of it, but they thought a future generation would. That changed as the money started rolling in from cotton.

That is a very reasonable assessment. Jefferson meant to make that line an issue about slavery from the beginning, and of course he worked other anti-slavery sentiments into his original draft.

The more pragmatic members of the Committee of five realized this was a no-go, and sensibly struck all the passages that would be problematic.

I'm sure they looked at that line and thought "We'll leave that in. People will think it is about them, and it makes the whole thing sound better, besides if we removed it, Jefferson would be pissed."

But the Citizenry? Slavery wasn't in their mind when it was drafted and signed, but Jefferson's clever little concept continued to percolate in the background, and as you've said, it had an impact in Massachusetts in the 1780s.

Of course it was judicial activism, because nobody who approved that constitution thought they were abolishing slavery at the time, but Activist judges have been twisting the text of a law for a very long time to get what they want.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"Others didn't go that far, but there was something of a consensus in the founding generation that slavery was incompatible with Republican values."

That's exactly right X.

Tim Barton just went out there and did a real banger of an interview and what's he out there saying? The Founders were the first in the Transatlantic world on the forefront of abolitionism.

Not the British.

As I posted about a year ago here at FR, Charlie Kirk used to go out there and talk about American abolitionism. Years before any European country.

We were first. Nobody else.

Before he died, universally well respected historian Gordon Wood did interviews and videos about abolitionism.

Gordon said Americans were first. That's the Founders. We own that. It's our property, our private property.

We are surrounded by people who want to kabuki dance around this fact and they want to sabotage America by giving the British Empire credit for something it did not do and therefore does not deserve.

We invented the abolitionism movements. During the Transatlantic period, that timeline is ours, we were the pioneers. It was the British who were the vetoers.

They vetoed our laws. That was an evil slave empire and it deserved our separation from it and to stomp it at Yorktown.