Slavery, Morgan, and Wood

Richard’s comment on Morgan reminds me of a connection I had been wondering about.  Does Morgan’s thesis on the rise of slavery resonate with Woods’ thesis on how America realized the evil of slavery?

In response to Dr. Johnson’s quip re: how strange it is that the lovers of liberty drive slaves, Morgan’s explanation seemed to argue that the connection was natural.  Does Wood go on to show that the connection was so natural that no one would notice the evil slavery until the Revolution broke up the hierarchies in which everyone lived (and which were so prevalent that they masked the oppression of slavery)?

It seems that one of the effects of the Revolution (according to Wood) was to open our eyes to the evils of slavery, that until then it had just been on a spectrum of control (along with indentured servants, who were also beaten).

“Slavery could be regarded, therefore, as merely the most base and degraded status in a society of several degrees of unfreedom, and most colonists felt little need as yet either to attack or to defend slavery any more than other forms of dependency and debasement.”

I understand where he’s coming from, though there were movements against slavery before the Revolution.  For example, it seemed to me that they were resisting nagging doubts about slavery surfaced by Christianity (eg, making slaves work on the Sabbath and ruling that conversion didn’t change a slave’s status).