One of the reasons, yeah. Enlightenment thinkers were straight horny for the classical and merchant republics.

Now if you look at those republics from a modern lens you go “Oh, that’s where the damage came from” but compared to divine right monarchies mid-colonization the Founding Fathers were woke af.

That all said, all slave owners in history were objectively evil. There is not a single one that didn’t know it too.