Thanks everybody, and a research question

Special thanks to Marilee for being the laison while I was down. A
parent's death, even when the parent is old, isn't exactly a thing you
recover from, but I'm writing a little. And I even have an idea for
an alternate history story of my own, as much as I usually hate
alternate history (I'm figuring I probably will like _Farthing_ but
that's a case of the singer not the song!).

My what-if is "what if the anti-slavery contingent had stuck to their
principles during the Constitutional Convention?" Preliminarily, I
think you have a smaller United States and a bunch of disunited
states, and a less developed and entrenched plantation system as it
would not have had the industrial and capital backing of the Northern
states, and, of course, war: depending on the timing and outcome of
the war(s) you have either an early end to slavery, partial or
complete, or a late ending to the transatlantic slave trade and also
an earlier end to slavery.

But this is a preliminary thing. I'm thinking I need to know a hell
of a lot more about the conditions and politics of the late eighteenth
century before I'm ready to go on. So.

Does anybody have favorite resources for late eighteenth century
politics, economics, culture -- and specifically Benjamin Franklin and
his family, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional
Convention -- or things I've forgotten to mention? -- Industrial and
agricultural developments, the structure of labor, labor
organizations, oh, anything?

Lucy Kemnitzer, still
chapter 22 is up:
http://www.baymoon.com/~ritaxis/donor/donorweb/donorindex
.

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