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/ [log in to unmask] To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html