So was Abraham Lincoln.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it...
That and his acceptance of the proposed 13th amendment confirming slavery forever, is all you need to know about "honest" Abe.
No he wasn't. He wasn't willing to go to war to fight for - or against slavery. As it turned out he ended up going to war over it anyway, but only because the southern slavocracy was bound and determined to do so.
It's only a mystery to DiogenesLamp because you know nothing, nothing of actual history.
You don't know, even though you've been told over and over, that slavery was a precondition for Union in 1787 and was accepted by all in 1860, in the South.
So Honest Abe was telling God's honest Truth: saving the Union was more important than abolishing slavery.
But if it happened he could do both, then that was a worthy goal, based on Republican abolitionist ideals.