Was it legal while they were in the Union? Yes? Then SHUT THE F*CK UP ABOUT AN EVIL WHICH THE UNION DID TOO!
Til you scream bloody murder at the Union ownership of slaves between 1776 and 1865, you are nothing but a lying hypocrite in expressing your concern for people for whom your cause you did not previously give a sh*t and for whom you had no intentions of doing anything about anyway, that is until you needed an excuse to stop another people's efforts to achieve independence.
Now you keep hammering this "Bait and Switch" Con argument because without your "Squirrel!" you don't have a good argument. As a matter of fact, your side looks pretty D@mn evil. You INVADED other people, not to free slaves, but to slap on chains yourselves!
So...freedom for me but not for thee is your mantra?
You weren't going to give them freedom anyway, so why are you continuing to LIE about it? Stop Lying. Stop twisting the truth. Stop making up justifications to rationalize the evil thing you did.
The Union had no intention of freeing those people until a year after the war had started. This claim is an ex post facto lie, but it is the only thing that you can use as a fig leaf, and that's why it persists.
You don't want real history, because real history shows your side to be in fact very Ugly. You want your made up fantasy history that makes you into the good guys fighting for freedom, even though you weren't.
So it would be just as accurate to identify you as a supporter of Southern state slavery as it is to call me a supporter of Northern state slavery.
You weren't going to give them freedom anyway, so why are you continuing to LIE about it?
Neither were you. So your bleating about seceding in the name of freedom and independence was for only a part of the Southern population.