What I was trying to say was that the claim is commonly made by revisionists that Lincoln and the Union Congress and people didn't really care about slavery, that Emancipation was only a ploy. My timeline was an attempt to demonstrate that emancipation was not an event, it was a process, and that this process started less than a month after the war began.
This is, of course, to be expected for an issue involving the property-or-people status of 4M, something like 15% of the US population at the time. Not to mention capital assets worth something along the lines of $3B, 15% to 20% of the value of all capital in the USA when the war started.
The claims that abolition was NOT a Union war goal are usually based on statements before the war or in its early days. But of course absolutely nothing can change public opinion more rapidly than a major war, and less than two years into the war, the vast majority of Unionists had abandoned the idea of reconstituting "the Union as it was," for the simple reason that they recognized this to be impossible.
Even in the border slave states, with the exception of KY and DE, this recognition was reached, which is why these states all emancipated their slaves, without compensation. Which I must admit was more than a little unfair to slave-owning Unionists in those states.
If Emancipation was a brilliant Union ploy, which it was, though not just a ploy, the question arises of what would have been its effect had Emancipation been implemented by the CSA?
It is fairly obvious that emancipation by the CSA in say, 1863, even very gradual emancipation, such as freeing only those born after its passage, would have immediately resulted in British and French recognition of the CSA.
Many in the British elite were longing for an excuse to take the USA down a notch. Recognition, followed by an attempt to trade, stopped by the blockade, would likely have followed. The Royal Navy might very well have been deployed to break the blockade, which it would have had no trouble doing. The US Navy had a a large number of ships by this time, but most of them were designed for catching blockade-runners, not fighting another full-bore Navy.
Break the blockade, arms and other supplies pour into the South, CSA morale soars, USA morale plummets. End of the war with a CSA victory follows shortly.
Some in the CSA recognized this course of action as desirable. So why was it never discussed in Congress or otherwise seriously considered, if independence rather than slavery was the critical issue for the South?
It's because protecting slavery was the reason the South wanted its independence. Independence without slavery would have vitiated the whole reason they had wanted out of the Union, and was quite literally unthinkable.
In early 1865 the CSA Congress couldn't even bring itself to offer freedom to the slaves it was recruiting for the army, and finally did so only after a personal plea from Lee. That is how unthinkable the prospect was.
So while the destruction of slavery was not the primary Union war aim, it became an auxiliary one less than halfway into the war. Meanwhile, the protection of slavery remained a Confederate war goal to the very end.
So was the War about slavery? Any reasonable person reviewing the history of the 1850s will agree that slavery was at the root of the hostility between the sections. It is also fair to say that initially ending slavery was not a primary Union war goal, though it became one in little more than a year.
Meanwhile, the protection of slavery was the primary reason for secession, and remained, along with independence, one of the two primary war goals of the Confederacy to its end. In fact, I would content that protecting slavery was more important to the CSA than independence, since IMO even a very moderate emancipation policy could have gotten them their independence. But when faced with the choice between emancipation and independence, they chose the third option. Neither.
“Any reasonable person reviewing the history of the 1850s will agree that slavery was at the root of the hostility between the sections.”
I think the evidence shows that Henry Clay’s (Lincoln’s idol) “American System” and its implementation had far more to do with the matter than slavery. Most Northerners only cared about slavery in the sense that they didn’t want slavery in their states because they didn’t want blacks in their states, which is why Northern states actually passed laws against even free blacks entering their states.
I certainly agree that slavery was in the mix, and the abolitionists, though small in number, were very articulate and had the means to disseminate their views widely.
You obviously have a serious interest in this topic and know quite a lot. You might enjoy reading Otto Scott’s “The Secret Six” (about the abolitionist backers of John Brown), DiLorenzo’s “The Real Lincoln”, and Charles Adams’ “Those Dirty Rotten Taxes” (tax lawyer and historian looking at the role taxation has played in civil unrest in the US). I’m sure any of them would be inexpensive at ABEbooks.com, and they would provide some additional food for thought.