[Ohioan]

The writer is confused. The American Revolution was about Liberty & self Government. It was the Leftist Jacobin Revolution in France that sought to couple equality with liberty, which is an oxymoron, easily debunked.

Declaration Of Independence--With Study Guide.

It would also be instructive to consider the Northwest Ordinance, as an indicator of the mindset of the Founders on Egalitarianism.

[DiogenesLamp]

On point and accurate as always.

[x]

If the American Revolution has nothing to do with slavery, why did five states (six including Vermont) take steps to abolish slavery even before the Constitution was ratified?

It would also be instructive to consider the Northwest Ordinance, as an indicator of the mindset of the Founders on Egalitarianism.

That is the document that forbade slavery in the territories north of the Ohio, west of the Appalachians and east of the Mississippi River.

Of course, you're off-target as usual. What we are talking about here isn't equality but liberty - equal liberty, the same basic rights for all.

Whatever came out of the Civil Rights movement in the end, the original motivation was liberty, as it was in the American Revolution.

[BroJoeK]

Ohioan: "The writer is confused.
The American Revolution was about Liberty & self Government.
It was the Leftist Jacobin Revolution in France that sought to couple equality with liberty, which is an oxymoron, easily debunked."

Well... some of our posters, like DiogenesLamp, like to claim the Declaration's "all men are created equal" was just flowery language, meant nothing really, or was only cynical pandering to lower classes, etc., etc.
I'd say that's totally unfair.

Clearly Founders meant all men were created with equal legal rights to freely "pursue their happiness".
There was no thought that somehow government must make everybody equally well off, such ideas came decades later.

As for slavery, even slaveholding Founders like Washington & Jefferson considered it a moral wrong which should be abolished, eventually.
Washington said he would give up slavery if necessary for the Union.
Jefferson proposed abolition in the Northwest Territories, adopted in 1788, and also national gradual compensated abolition, not adopted due to slaveholders' resistance.

But it took another two generations before slavery was seen as a positive moral good worth destroying the Union over.