of the signers of the Declaration, of those that we know their views on slavery, there were more abolitionists than slavery apologists.
The people who are asserting their virtue today by denouncing the Confederacy don't know how they would have acted if they had been alive in the 1850-1865 period. If they had been slave owners would they have freed their slaves and adopted a life of poverty for themselves and their families?
The slaveholding aristocracy was so entrenched in power in the slave states that it was hard to imagine how the institution could be ended. Delaware was a slave state with only a few thousand slaves (more "free persons of color" than slaves there) but even during the war the slaveholders resisted very strongly any effort to end slavery there. When West Virginia broke away from Virginia, they did not free the slaves but only adopted a plan for gradual emancipation (to benefit black people born after a certain date, not those already enduring slavery).