This means they did not agree with you, and therefore their document was not intended to agree with you either.
Forget about them for a minute.
How about you? Are black men men, or not?
Are they or are they not endowed by their Creator with certain UNALIENABLE rights?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED EQUAL, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
Yes, of course, and that is about the extent of your deliberate baiting that I will put up with.
You are deliberately trying to skew the issue away from the salient aspect. You keep trying to lure it down a cul-de-sac so as to avoid confronting the core of it.
The Union did not recognize the rights of black men until it became convenient to their purpose to do so, so spare me the moral posturing. When that army invaded South Carolina, not a man jack of them was marching to end slavery, and i'm fed up with people deliberately trying to gloss over that essential point.
Abolishing Slavery wasn't on the "to do" list till approximately two years later. It was never the priority, it was just a cynical war tactic that later became a cynical political tactic.
Are they or are they not endowed by their Creator with certain UNALIENABLE rights?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED EQUAL, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
You are quoting only part of the Declaration and not considering what was stricken out of Jefferson's draft and how one of Jefferson's charges against the King was changed to address a problem the Founders faced with a then current British action concerning slaves. I'll repost something I posted over ten years ago in a thread that was later pulled because of a flame war. Because the thread was pulled I can no longer provide a link to it:
Thomas Jefferson very probably meant "all men were created equal" to apply to slaves, but I don’t think the Continental Congress did, and it is their document that finally issued, not Jefferson’s draft.
The Continental Congress (hereafter "CC") removed Jefferson’s charges against the King that "He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens …" and replaced it with "He has excited domestic insurrection among us …" The CC probably didn’t consider slaves to be fellow citizens.
The insurrections that both Jefferson and the CC may be referring to may be things like the Royal Governor of Virginia’s 1775 proclamation freeing slaves of the rebels [Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t original]:
And I hereby further declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to Rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty's Troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing the Colony to a proper sense of their duty, to this Majesty's crown and dignity. [Source: Lord Dunmore's Proclamation as Governor of Virginia, November 14, 1775]
The CC also removed the charges against the King in Jefferson’s draft that "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." Why would the CC take that out if they felt that "all men are created equal" applied to slaves?
The Declaration of Independence is a great document, not perfect perhaps, but really great, monumental, and worthy of respect.
Interestingly, the preamble of the Confederate Constitution removed the "promote the general welfare" clause of the preamble of the US Constitution that seemed to favor unlimited powers for the central government while the body of the Constitution wisely limited federal power. The Confederates also made it clear that each state was acting in its sovereign and independent character to create the federal government. No more self-serving Lincoln fantasy that the Union created the states. From Wikipedia:
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The Preamble to the Confederate Constitution: "We, the people of the Confederate States, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America."