[DiogenesLamp]

How about you show me the philosophical turning point that happened prior to the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers to turn our forefathers that you think supported slavery to what they said after 1776.

Your sentence is badly phrased, but if I can correctly garner from it what you meant to ask, you are asking me what was the turning point?

That's easy. The turning point was 1776 with those five little words Jefferson inserted in the Declaration of independence which got people to thinking that freedom ought to extend to "all men."

For context, here’s some of what was written in the Federalist Papers on slavery:

You need to get more up to speed on the timeline. The Federalist papers all came after the Declaration of Independence. The Federalist papers were created for the purpose of generating support for the adoption of the 1787 constitution, and so they have no bearing on what the Founders were doing in 1776, which was establishing a right to independence.

As I said before in my previous message, you cannot use later actions to justify previous actions. What they did 11 years later has no bearing on what they were doing in 1776.

You can't justify past actions by claiming future actions made your past actions right.

[BroJoeK]

jdsteel to DiogenesLamp post #556: "Your opinion that the founding fathers did not care about slavery is discredited by the writings and arguments of that time period."

DiogenesLamp to jdsteel #559: "Let us be clear on this point.
Your claim is only valid if you have evidence of it prior to the Declaration of Independence.
What they did subsequent to 1776, (The year they actually established the new government) is irrelevant to what was their intent when they established the new government.
You can't justify past actions by claiming future actions made your past actions right.
So do you have any example of the founders great concern over slavery prior to 1776?"

Here DiogenesLamp is arguing that, just as in 1860, our Founders in 1776 did not oppose slavery, and also just as in 1860, Independence in 1776 was not "all about slavery".
To bolster this claim he notices that slavery was never mentioned, even indirectly, in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, and indeed that many Founders remained slaveholders both before and after 1776.
Instead, DiogenesLamp notes that Jefferson's only direct mention of slavery in 1776 was deleted from his Declaration's final version by other Founders.

DiogenesLamp's logic seems to be: since 1776 Founders didn't mention slavery, that's evidence both that 1) Founders supported slavery, and 2) that 1776 Independence was not "all about slavery" -- both just as in 1860, DiogenesLamp tells us.

In opposing this, jdsteel notes that most Founders in 1776 considered slavery morally wrong, and many had already begun to abolish slavery in both their personal and public lives, Ben Franklin & John Adams included.
Other anti-slavery 1776 Founders included Samuel Adams, Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine & Oliver Ellsworth.

We are not told which 1776 delegates, exactly, deleted Jefferson's grievance against slavery -- it could even have included Franklin himself, on grounds of "keeping peace in the family" as more important than crusading for abolition.
But the fact is that many Founders later expressed and acted in opposition to slavery, including such Southerners as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison & Patrick Henry.

Now DiogenesLamp wishes us to believe that unless Founders expressed opposition to slavery before 1776 they were somehow not truly opposed and indeed favored slavery making them equivalent to 1860 secessionists.

DiogenesLamp: "As I said before in my previous message, you cannot use later actions to justify previous actions.
What they did 11 years later has no bearing on what they were doing in 1776. "

Actually, Founders' actions were totally consistent from 1776 onwards -- they opposed slavery, but, just as Lincoln in 1861, they put abolition second to the more important need for national unity.

By stark contrast, 1860 secessionists put protecting slavery as their number one reason for disunion, and they made slavery effectively guaranteed in their new Confederate constitution.