Troy:
Thoughtful response. There is much I agree with in your post. I will do my best to respond to yours where I disagree.
1) Is anything clear? Including your post last? Or is everything a muddle and open for interpretation? To put it in economic terms, could it therefore be that Marx could be right because we can never really know if Mises (or the Austrians) were right about the market (generally)?
2) My argument cuts across both the abolitionists and the pro-slavery faction. Both are wrong and somewhat for the same reasons.
3) We agree here on your point #3. But it is, dare I say, clear, that many states that succeeded did so to continue to hold (in perpetuity) human beings. Most of the ones presented in my link state their reason. Protection of an “inferior” race is in the very thick of it. When was this EVER accepted in the Founding?
4) You might claim that only those who are part of a school can say anything with clarity, or unanimity, but, can you name 1 Founder who asserted of the slaves, or black human beings, what Stephens, or Calhoun, our South Carolina, or Texas, or Georgia, etc. did?
5) The Declaration is mystical? So, are you saying that there is no foundation, in nature, for human equality? Does this mean Locke himself was mystical? (keep in mind here I am not maintaining Lincoln fulfilled some prophecy. All I want to know is if the laws of nature bespeak of human equality. In other words, is the Declaration right on that point or not? If the Declaration causes recoil: are all humans equally human?).
6) There is much to note about the hardening of the heart of the South vis-a-vis slavery and German Rationalism, but I will end here.
