Having only read "Bury the Chains, The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery", a popular history book that depicts the british abolition movement not gaining momentum until over a decade after 1775, I wonder how the author mentioned by the OP manages to make a covincing argument that there was a realistic abolition threat from Britain in 1775.

I can't speak for this specific author's academic reception, but what I can say is that such an interpretation is at least partially supported by other historians.

In Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia, Woody Holton argues that the American Revolution was not so much the righteous throwing off of a despotic, absentee foreign ruler that your high-school textbooks talk about, but rather that the wealthy gentry, especially the likes of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, had no choice but to take up arms to prevent a rebellion by debtors, slaves, and the "99%" of the period, largely due to economic recessions tied to the prices of agricultural goods. In essence, what he is saying is that it was either a case of stay in the British Empire, and take a massive hit to their pocket books (including, of course, the possibility of ending slavery), or declare independence and pass laws that ensured they could continue to make top dollar selling their goods, and also continue a system of both slavery (of blacks) and share-cropping debt bondage (of non-blacks).

Holton, Woody. Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Williamsburg. 1999.

I was not familiar with this thesis so did a bit of googling. I found a democracy now interview video and transcript in which Gerald Horne outlines his basic premises and reasoning.

Posting here as this gives a much more nuanced overview of this thesis as compared to the summaries on book review sites etc.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/27/counter_revolution_of_1776_was_us

I am currently reading the Horne book. I think the arguments he makes are important. Perhaps they can be argued but I do not think they can be effectively repudiated nor should they be ignored.

A couple of the key points he makes are:

a) The British fought the French, Spanish and Indian Wars 1756- 1763 in large part to protect the colonies (Besides direct warfare, both France and Spain were offering Africans liberty and arms if they escaped from the colonies and converted to Catholicism). The subsequent taxes imposed on the Mainland colonists to help off set the costs of that war and of the garrisons required to defend them were not only being repudiated by the colonists but they were now establishing trading channels with the defeated French and Spanish, while transgressing treaty agreements between Britain and the indigenous people.

b) Many New Englanders were involved in the slave trade at secondary and tertiary levels, transporting or legally developing and defending property rights over slaves and their transportation (Besides, did the majority of Americans and Canadians and Brits really want to fight the war in Iraq, or was this an agenda item of a few interested parties who promoted the idea irrespective of the costs to or interests of the majority of people in their countries, Again, were the majority of British subjects pro-Bourbon Monarchists and anti-Jacobin during the French Revolution or was this something promoted by British merchant and financial interests through their lackies).

c) The fear of Africans or Indigenous uprisings led to a community of interests among all 'whites' in the colonies, which was a supra-social dynamic that instituted a unspoken apartheid regime in American Colonies. Which brings up the obvious point that while fighting for their emancipation, the emancipation for their slaves was not tabled until the 1840s.

On a different note of historical interest: I was surprised by the significant population of 'Transported Felons' that were dropped off in the colonies (particularly int he Southern States) int he years prior to the 1776. These criminals benefited from their whiteness once in America to obtain some level of acceptance in their new lives. This option had to be abandoned in 1776, though a couple of years later, another colony was found where the Brits could dump their down and out who had turned to crime in order to survive.

The Horne book is definitely worth a read, even if Dr Horne's tendencies to repeat himself and to jump around when it comes to chronology can be frustrating. I would also have preferred the inclusion of some statistical tables.

Apologies for the long, late response.

a similar point could be made about the war in the south. It is fairly well established that their was much more opposition to the war in the american south. The British did quite well initially when the war shifted to the south and even recruited loyalist regiments.

At the Kings Mountain NC battle for example, the only Brit on either side, was Patrick Ferguson leader of this force of american loyalists, mostly Carolinians but also about 100 from New york.

The south was filled with loyalists many who fought for King George. New England seems devoid of them, although there were loyalists in the large cities. And the middle colonies somewhere in between.

In the middle colonies: the most notable were from upstate NY I guess.
In NY at the battle of Oriskany, this was also mostly americans fighting one another (and a lot of indians on both sides). My feeling was that loyalists in NY had a lot to do with indian relationships on the frontier. Some of the major loyalists such as John Johnson in this region were those with large landholdings in upstate NY who were closely allied to the indians.

if the war were really about prolonging slavery then wouldnt you have seen far more southern revolutionaries? instead public opinion seems to be about 50-50 in the south. And much more in favor of revolution in the north.

Even then the geography of loyalists is a complicated question. I would guess that the coastal cities may have had more loyalists as perhaps the wealthy who were connected to shipping favored the status quo. But then again there were loyalists in upstate NY and that had more to do with indian relationships.

To say that americans were a monolith in why they revolted would be absurd. You have frontiersman from Tenessee and the carolinas fighting the British and you have frontiersman from NY fighting the americans. You have people in large new england cities who are pro revolution and you have people in large (relatively) southern cities who are pro British. I do think by and large that the farming sector favored revolution.

I think the reality is that the americans in revolt were a patchwork of allied parties having varied geography and varied economic interests. I think the reality "on the ground" in any given local region was that they had to make deals with whoever was in power whether they were pro slavery or anti slavery. WItness the way the drafters of the Constitution punted the whole slavery issue.

It seems to me, that slavery was just a complicated issue that they had to dance around or go to bed with it, if it helped the revolution. To say the American Revolution was about slavery is a ridiculous overbid.

How does the Author explain why most of the action in the run up to the Revolution occurred in Massachusetts, where slavery was not a very prevalent nor important institution, and where it was swiftly abolished during the course of the Revolution?