Considering seven states had already seceded before he even took the oath, and he was hoping to ease their fears and advert a war, and that four of those seven states had declared in their articles of secession that they had done so to preserve slavery, it would have been pretty foolhardy to propose an amendment to end slavery at that point.
It would have been impossible to do it at any point, and there should have been no fear of a war if Lincoln had chosen not to start one.
And of course, once again trot out your three little states that wrote about slavery being their primary cause, and ignore the other 8 that did not.
Virginia, the most notable and powerful of all the states at that time, clearly said they were seceding because Washington DC had become tyrannical and was abusing the power it had been given by calling for an invasion of the Southern states.
But you just keep forcing that history into the mold you are trying to create.
” . . . it would have been pretty foolhardy to propose an amendment to end slavery at that point.”
Sure, it was not in the north’s economic or political best self interest.
I guess we can forever dismiss the notion that the north “fought the war to free the slaves.”