What likely explains the poor standing of leopold among historians today

The poor standing of Leopold the 2nd is most probably attributed to the role he had in the extermination of huge amounts of people in Belgian colonies at the time. This wasn't known at the time, but today we known that Leopold the 2nd had ordered a genocide over the Congonese people.

The second , larger puritan colony of massachusetts bay was conceived as a "city upon a hill". but it also struggled with internal turmoil like the salem witch trials and external conflicts like king philip's (metacom's) war.