The story I heard was that the Southern Planters were up to their eyeballs in loans to London.

So when the economic slump hit, pressuring the Crown to want to make the colonists pay for their own security (taxes), a thing of great importance to the northerners, the southerners were being equally pounded by lenders in London.

Repudiation of british debts was a big deal to the southern plantation types.

Always seem to be a coalescence of events, and a broad cast of characters, each with their own motivations.

Steve