Southerners had their own reasons for supporting independence.
Tidewater planters found themselves under an increasing debt
burden, made worse by British taxes and unfair competition from
monopolies. Lord Dunmore’s anti-slavery initiatives frightened
the Virginia planters as much as the “lawn sleeves” terrified
New Englanders. Slavery continued to exert mounting tensions on
Whig-American notions of liberty and property, and the fact that
the southerners could unite with their brethren further north in
no way minimized the sharp differences between the sections over
this issue. The reality of slavery also placed tremendous strain
on the colonists’ Christianity, posing the crucial question of
how any Christian could enslave another in light of Biblical
teachings that in Christ there was “neither bond nor free.” It
confronted American believers with the a staggering reality: if
the purpose of slavery, as some claimed, was to make it possible
for the “heathen” to “come to Jesus,” then why were slaves
denied acces