“but it was clearly the sentiment of the leadership that slavery was their primary motivation.”
That is only clear in the rewritten history perpetrated by the left. They got you. They sucked you in. They lied to you, and not only did you believe them, you still do. On this issue, you are as disinformed as some soccer mom who thinks gun control is the answer to school shootings.
“I don’t think that they were “leftards”
Not them; the leftards are the ones who rewrote the history of that period for the purpose of deceiving as many as they could.
People hate to be told stuff like this. People want to think, “I’m smart; if they had been lying to me I’d have seen through it.”
No matter how kindly you try to tell them that the left got them with fake news or fake history, most people just take it as an attack on their intelligence.
The one who have attempted to rewrite history are the Lost Causers.