As were they all. I keep pointing out that so many of you keep trying to apply modern morality to a different time period, showing no comprehension of the zeitgeist of that era.
Their motivation and decisions must be looked at from perspective of the era in which they lived, not from the perspective of 2016 USA.
By the end of his life Lincoln was willing to countenance giving at least some African-Americans the vote -- at a time when Dickens was mocking the idea.
This is not at all inconsistent with a claim that political power was paramount to him. Newly enfranchising voters who were guaranteed to vote for your party will insure political supremacy and therefore power.
It is not unlike the tactic which modern Democrats use in importing all sorts of third worlders (especially non whites) who can be counted on to reliably vote for handouts, meaning Democrats.
A cynical man would assert this was just a raw grab for more power by Lincoln, and this actually dovetails quite nicely with the assertion that the whole Civil War was about power anyway.
Whoever controls the government gets to spend the money, and more importantly get to set policy that can enrich their friends and cronies. I will once again point out that the era subsequent to Lincoln was an occasion of the worst graft and corruption the nation had ever seen.
George Washington improved in his lifetime. Lincoln still wanted to deport them out of the Country just prior to the end of his.
Washington became more ambivalent about slavery during the Revolution but didn't go further than expressing his doubts in private.
Lincoln went from accepting slavery to supporting abolition and voting rights for some African-Americans.
Lincoln supported voluntary colonization by freedmen during the war, but by the end of his life he certainly wasn't seeking to deport African-Americans.
Why the cheap caricature of Lincoln, anyway?
I won't say your comic book version of history is unworthy of you, but you might want to aspire to something higher.
Referring solely to DiogenesLamp and his coconspirators.
DiogenesLamp: "A cynical man would assert this was just a raw grab for more power by Lincoln, and this actually dovetails quite nicely with the assertion that the whole Civil War was about power anyway."
All government and politics are related to "power", but issues in American politics are always the question of justice and just use of political power.
The fact is that from 1788 through 1860 the Constitution's 3/5 rule effectively forced all slaves to "vote" for their masters.
That ended after 1865.
You would not expect former slaves to ever again vote for such "masters", would you?
DiogenesLamp: "I will once again point out that the era subsequent to Lincoln was an occasion of the worst graft and corruption the nation had ever seen."
Totally unsupported by any objective data.
The real facts are: that period saw the longest-term fastest growing US economy in our history.
There's no objective evidence showing a percentage of crookedness any higher in, say, 1905 than it was in, say 1855.