Washington kept his own accounts and Martha's strictly separate.
Pelham: "At his death only his own slaves were freed."
Washington did not dispose of Martha's assets in his own will.
Pelham: "George Washington was comfortable enough with slavery that he tried to recover two who ran away while he was President."
Washington was typical of Virginia slave owners in the late 1700s, only somewhat more... what would be the right word, "progressive"?
Pelham: "Jefferson certainly wrote the language that you quoted, but significantly he didn’t free any of his own slaves."
Jefferson was perhaps a step down from Washington, in that Jefferson could never quite put his own money where his mouth was.
Still, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence language clearly shows he understood, and his plans as president to use Federal money to purchase freedom for slaves shows he was willing to act -- with Other People's Money.
But the bottom line for all Southern slave-holders was just that: their bottom lines.
Slavery was increasingly profitable, even in Jefferson's time, and they could not imagine doing without it.
Pelham: "The British, like Lincoln, invoked an emancipation proclamation as a wartime measure.
And they were fighting against slave holding American rebels."
Once war began, the Brits did a role reversal, as Jefferson's Declaration of Independence words show: the Brits went from imposing slavery to offering slaves their freedom.
But we are talking about the beginnings of war, in both 1775 and 1861.
In both cases it was the slave imposing power (1775 British, 1861 secessionists) which began the war by assaulting and seizing stores of American arms, ammunition, military facilities, etc.
Pelham: "The 1776 Patriots were rebels, traitors to the ruling government, and many owned slaves.
The Loyalists, like Lincoln, stood for perpetual union, loyalty to the legitimate government, and emancipation."
You have it exactly backwards.
In 1775 as in 1861 American patriots stood for the United States, rule of law, limited representative government, and the concept that "all men are created equal" -- at least all white English speaking men.
In 1775 as in 1861, war began when Brits and secessionists made lawless assaults on peaceful people in order to confiscate their weapons, ammunition and other military resources.
Pelham: "If the immorality of slavery is paramount, if rebellion is treason, then the modern neo-Yankee wrapping himself in a cloak of morality and loyalty to the union needs to explain how the Founders escape their condemnation for the very things that they use to condemn the Confederacy."
In 1860, neither Lincoln nor the Republican party in general campaigned to abolish slavery in Slave States.
But Deep South slave-holders saw Lincoln's election as a mortal threat to their "peculiar institution" and as a result first declared their secession, then started and formally declared war on the United States (May 6, 1861 -- see Article 3, Section 3 US Constitution).
So while the issue of slavery was "paramount" to Deep-South slave holders, it was not "paramount" to Unionists in 1861.
Slavery only became important to Unionists later in the war, as a weapon to use against secessionists.
In short: while the immorality of slavery was important, even before 1861, it was the usefulness of emancipation as a weapon against slave-holding secessionists which guaranteed freedom for millions of African-Americans.
Pelham: "The answer appears to be in some sort of flexible morality, a moral relativism, where what is evil in 1860 is somehow not all that evil in 1776."
You sound very confused and disoriented.
I hope my words here have been of some help, FRiend.
“You have it exactly backwards.
In 1775 as in 1861 American patriots stood for the United States, rule of law, limited representative government, and the concept that “all men are created equal” —”
Oh? And we find that definition of Patriot where, exactly?
Well in your subjective opinion of course, which you want the rest of us to conflate with objective truth in the same manner that you do.
“You sound very confused and disoriented.
I hope my words here have been of some help, FRiend.”
So it’s little wonder that you see an opposing view as “disoriented” and “confused”. Why, anyone who fails to be impressed with an amateur internet psychologist of your standing would have to be afflicted. It surely couldn’t be that you make poor arguments and find a need to resort to ad hominem to save your sorry ass.
It is easy to understand that the Framers sought to put the institution of slavery on a path to gradual peaceful extinction. One way to do that was to permit freedmen to vote, as NC did until 1835. Another was to abolish the slave trade. Jefferson introduced legislation to make it easier to give slaves their freedom several times. Virginia never passed it, rather, they passed legislation making it more difficult.
Others who were not framers sought to make the institution of slavery more robust. Some did that because they owned slaves, or otherwise profited from them. Others did that for other reasons that I will not guess.
The institution of slavery was horrific. The abolition of slavery was one of very few good things to come out of the Civil War. It would have been a better world if the Slave Power had been willing to accept gradual and peaceful abolition. They were not.