[Triple]

Unfortunately, with the emancipation proclamation, Lincoln only freed some slaves. The ones outside his jurisdiction. He freed not one slave in “the Union.”

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

‘He freed not one slave in “the Union.”’

Under the Constitution he did not have the power to free slaves in states not in insurrection.

[kenavi]

Neither Washington, Jefferson, Madison...ever took a public stand against slavery. Lincoln did, he wanted to stop its spread to the frontier.

Lincoln represented a broad spectrum of American opinion. You can disagree with them, maybe you think slavery somehow was going to die off on its own even as it spread westward, or that it wasn't the province of the Federal government to take a stand to limit it. But many Americans of the time, prejudiced and ill-informed perhaps by our "modern" standards, thought as he did. And they paid for it with copious quantities of their blood.