When judging history, you need to know the context.
“whereas today, national independence movements often take it as a granted principle that a people ought to be free to make its own government, ought to be free of the domination of another people (the principle of self-determination), the Declaration assumes its reader thinks the opposite. It assumes a reader who accepts that monarchy and empire are both just and natural, for whom the idea of self-determination is at best dangerous nonsense. And that makes sense – almost none of the peoples in the world the framers knew were self governing (notable exceptions for the Dutch and Swiss)”
https://acoup.blog/2026/07/04/collections-on-the-declaration-of-independence/