Constantine Gutzman wrote:
>Along that line, I would note that Woody Holton's _Forced Founders_ proved
>several years ago that fears concerning slavery was one of the factors
>motivating Virginia Patriots to separate from Great Britain in the 1770s.
>It's odd that while the Confederates are always castigated on this score
>(rightly, in my opinion), the Patriots of 1776 get a pass.  This, it seems
>to me, likely says something about the motivations of the people involved in
>this historiographic debate -- but I'm not sure exactly what.

I expect that it has to do mainly with the primacy of slavery in the question of Southern secession in the 1860s--the very issue that is being debated on this list.  The Founders did not articulate the preservation of slavery as a central motive for their own "secession movement."  This is not to say that it wasn't *one* of the issues that spurred them--as you pointed out.  I don't personally believe that historians have much of a personally-vested motive to downplay that particular aspect of the colonial leaders--indeed, one might argue that recent scholarship has (rightly) done a great deal of unearthing the "darker" aspects of the Founders' individual and collective decisions, actions, and life stories.

--Eric

Eric D. M. Johnson
Proprietor
The Village Factsmith Historical Consulting & Research
http://www.factsmith.com/
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