The DoI asserted that men were equal,... free to decide which form of government they preferred.
So if I can get enough people to go along with me, I have the moral right to enslave you and your family?
John Brown was a mass murderer, a lunatic.
True enough. I never said he was a nice guy. I said his attempts to lead a slave rebellion were and are morally defensible.
I'm not sure why you think my characterization of Dred Scott is BS. Taney stated that blacks were not and could not be US citizens, in plain defiance of historical facts. That his opinion was widely popular at the time had absolutely nothing to do with whether it war correct. BTW, at the time war broke out he had been working for several years on decision which would make it unconstitutional for states to outlaw slaver.
People confuse the Declaration and the Constitution. The Declaration was a statement of moral principles which did nothing to establish a form of government.
The Constitution does not, except implicitly, proclaim moral principles. It is rather an attempt to establish a government based on the principles outlined in the Declaration.
Perhaps I can take this to another level. If you and your family were enslaved, would you have a moral right to fight and kill for your freedom? If you have such a right, on what moral grounds do you deny the same right to anyone else? And if a human has the moral right to fight for freedom, don't other humans have the moral right to help them do so?
It meant something different to Jefferson and the framers. Locke heavily influenced the framers, especially Jefferson and Locke's Two Treatises of Government. From volume II, Locke writes, 'To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.'
Continuing, 'A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another: there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the Lord and Master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another and confer on him by an evident and clear appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.'
True, the DoI did not establish a government.
And if a human has the moral right to fight for freedom, don't other humans have the moral right to help them do so?
According to the Bible, those in slavery are to treat their masters with respect - not murder. But just how many murders are justified?