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Against my better judgment, I'm kind of in the process of formulating another thrilling 18 Questions on the Civil War, like I did about a year or so ago. One of them was going to do with this quote from Abraham Lincoln himself, which was in response to a Horace Greeley editorial:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

Every time I read this, it strikes me as Lincoln's way of saying to the abolitionists "look, if we don't find a way to win this thing, abolishing chattel slavery will be the least of our problems." My question with this quote is actually twofold: 1) is the aforementioned analysis of that quote correct? and 2) does this statement prove the meme that before 1/1/1863 abolishing slavery wasn't an ultimate objective of the war?

I am a genealogist, and have proven that 4 of 5 of my civil war confederate veteran ancestors did not own slaves. N-S always fails to comprehend that when people have their country invaded they will respond by defending.

He also never realizes that slavery (though wrong) held together the economy of the south. Only 1/3 of the south's population owned slaves, so it bears mentioning that the underlying economics had actually more to do with it than the issue of slavery itself. Because if it was primarily about slavery I don't think the groundswell of support would have been there.

And last anyone who thinks Sherman is a "hero" (N-S) is below slime (IMO)

The shooting to spread slavery into western territories had begun before 1860. Lincoln's party platform pledged to prevent slavery's further spread. The so-called The Crittenden Compromise included this disturbing language, which should ring a familiar bell to those who followed the Obamacare debate, in particular some proposals mentioned by Harry Reid et al:

Article 6: No future amendment of the Constitution shall affect the five preceding articles; nor the third paragraph of the second section of the first article of the Constitution; nor the third paragraph of the second section of the fourth article of said Constitution; and no amendment will be made to the Constitution which shall authorize or give to Congress any power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any of the States by whose laws it is, or may be, allowed or permitted.

Even this so-called compromise turned out to be too little to interest the pro-slavery elements who created the various ordinances of secession and started the Civil War. It was also a repudiation of the rather mild and moderate plank about preventing slavery's further spread. Lincoln stated that he'd been elected on the basis of the platform, and that plank in particular.