To Preserve Slavery? Human Bondage and The American Revolution

In the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones made the controversial claim that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” This talk by University of Maryland historian Richard Bell weighs the evidence for and against the 1619 Project’s provocative claim that Americans fought the American revolution to preserve and protect their right to own other human beings as slaves. Is that claim supportable? What’s the evidence? Does any of it hold water?