I’ve personally perused the primary source material: hundreds of newspapers and the letters of revolutionary leaders. There is no sense in which this was a motivating factor for almost anyone. I can’t even recall it mentioned.

I’m also in puzzlement about this alleged American denial of slavery. In US K12 in the South my curriculum and that of everyone I know was: here’s the bad things we did to the Indians, Revolutionary War, here’s the evils of slavery, Civil War, World War II and the Holocaust and we didn’t do enough, then the heroes of the Civil Rights era. This all got harped on for 12 years. Almost nothing else got covered at all. It’s very self flagellating.