For people thinking about Edmund Morgan and @WilliamHogeland: to answer "But what about American Slavery, American Freedom?" check out pages 168, 208, 293 of Inventing the People, 3 of the few times he discusses "slaves"; you'll see what he was really trying to do with ASAF.

To summarize: he was trying to explain elite Anglo attitudes towards the landless poor (irrespective of race), the success of the southern elite's style of leadership (despite less Protestant work ethic), and the comparative lack of social distance among landed whites

And in the end, I think you can fairly say he was trying to rescue the Founders' reputation. Let me add a couple of choice quotes from a book review he wrote in 1998 (of works by Ira Berlin, Philip Morgan, and some public history stuff)

"Whatever guilt we may feel for slavery stops short of repudiating our national heroes because of their role in oppressing a whole race..." (1)

"....Their sins have to be attributed to a system in which everybody was involved, including the slaves, whose necessary participation was an embarrassment to men like Washington and Jefferson." (2)

There is, needless to say, a lot to unpack there. He positions himself and his audience as white, and the word "involved" is doing a tremendous amount of work there.

Anyway, for those with Project Muse descriptions, I get into the weeds on this here: https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.gc.cuny.edu/article/612098  and do a quick and dirty version of it here: https://www.processhistory.org/carp-paradox/