“The men you name, otherwise good men, were engaged in an evil practice.”
The Royal government that those founders rebelled against had offered two emancipation proclamations during the war. Dunmore’s and Philipsburg.
So did the wrong side win the Revolution in a moral sense?
And should New England have formed its own separate country like the Essex Junto and the Hartford Convention wanted?
Its interesting when you read the history of the abolition movement in the US; it was they who argued for secession for years, saying that the North should not let itself be “unequally yoked” and should secede from the South.
The British famously fought against slavery starting decades before the Civil War, and mostly stopped the slave trade across the Atlantic.
But the British supported the South, I think they saw a split in the country to be an opportunity for them (as they had supported the various independence movements in South America). They even sent Irish mercenaries to South America to help overthrow the Spanish...
People are complicated. They do what they do, and their grandchildren pick up the pieces. You seldom if ever see in your own time the full import of the things you do.