[Bubba Ho-Tep]

You construct a straw man of Lincoln's position on slavery. He didn't run as the man who would end slavery, or the "Great Emancipator." He said repeatedly that he had no intention of ending slavery in the states where it existed. What he consistently opposed was the extension of slavery into the territories--check out the Crittenden Compromise, which he rejected.

Nevertheless, the southern states saw his election as a threat to slavery, as evidenced by their Declarations of Causes, among many other documents, and seceded to protect their property interests.

And there's one fact you can't deny: When the war was over, slavery was dead.

[Trod Upon]

It was not my intent to suggest he ran as “TGE” and I don’t believe that I have. It is my position that the mantle of Great Emancipator has been, IMO, undeservedly placed upon him post hoc by those pushing a political narrative that the war was primarily about ending slavery when in fact it was about retaining the southern states. My comments were directed at those who swallow that narrative. Yes slavery was dead after the war, along with the southern economy and bid for independence. Look, I don’t question the immorality of holding humans in slavery, but if you negate the legitimacy of the southern drive for independence over issues of property and national self determination, what does it say of the original colonial revolt? Why were the slaveholders of 1776 any more entitled to nationhood than the slaveholders of 1861? I think they probably weren’t, so we build myths about the war and its causes that appeal to emotion and patriotism to obscure the uncomfortable realities.